


Unforeseen Circumstances

by TheThirdEpsilon



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Eventual Romance, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Romance, Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:55:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 25,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28253517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheThirdEpsilon/pseuds/TheThirdEpsilon
Summary: Stranded upon a world towards one of the outer corner of the galaxy, a female eldar and a male imperial guardsman are forced to cooperate to keep themselves alive upon this planet.
Relationships: Female Eldar/Asuryani x Male Imperial guardsman
Comments: 2
Kudos: 65





	1. Gamma Eridanus

Untouched was the only way the planet of Gamma-Eridanus 3 could be described; an alien rain forest of tall trees bearing long and hanging leaves, reaching down but not touching the soil that sustains them as their roots aggressively swerved in and out of the ground creating a maze of foreign wood. Alongside these trees, were almost perfectly spherical bushes, vibrantly colored and gently rustling in the breeze, only for one of them to suddenly retreat into a small rough shell as the muddied boot of an imperial guardsman squelched into the ground mere feet away from it. He was not the only one trudging through the viscous sludge that was the ground however, for he was a part of a large delta formation of twenty guardsmen, each donning a set of flak armor and a relatively sizable hip mounted survival bag while carrying their lasguns in hand. They weren't alone, behind them walked a group of five woefully under-prepared 'survey specialists', donning a variety of almost fragile and rapidly muddying non-military clothes while carrying various different pieces of equipment that, to the guardsmen, could only be described as 'science stuff'.

The audible 'squelch' that each boot-step would make as the group waded through the forest was becoming almost rhythmic, until a sudden and surprised exclamation interrupted the group, followed by a wet thud and slap. Everyone turned to look at where the noise came from, some even bringing their lasguns to bear, only to discover it was one of the guardsmen. His face had been planted firmly into the ground after which he promptly lifted his head, only to discover that, upon him, was bestowed a mouthful of slimy brown-green mud. His reaction was swift, coughing and hacking and desperately wiping the stuff out of his face and mouth, only for it to be replaced by more as his hands were similarly muddy. The scene he was creating earned him waves of laughter from his fellow brothers in arms as he finally coughed up the word "FRAK!" between each gag and sputter.  
"Fething face first, Rico!" Tymon yelled between his own laughter and the laughter of his comrades. The only answer the thoroughly muddied ‘Rico’ would dignify Tymon with, was more gagging while the survey team remained relatively quiet, thankful that they were able to finally get some rest, at least for a moment.  
"Eugh! This gak is everywhere!" Rico eventually managed to complain as he wiped the sludge off of him and his lasgun, yet despite his best attempts at cleaning himself up, mud still dripped torso to toe from his uniform as he grimaced at the almost rancid smell.

It was not long before the group was back on the move, their boots once again rhythmically slapping through the wet, viscous mud that coated the forest floor, although it was starting to thin as a clearing came into view beyond the treeline. One by one the group stepped out of the forest and into the small landscape where the trees and ankle deep mud was replaced by a sea of grass that swayed to evade the uncaring boots of the imperial guardsmen. The clearing however, was comparatively small, merely interrupting the uncomfortable and borderline treacherous forest that they had just come from. Yet right in its center, was a smooth grey structure, an obelisk with alien writing carved into its otherwise unnaturally clean surfaces.  
“Alright ladies, fan out and secure the area, let the survey team do their thing” commanded sergeant Jackson to which he received a couple of half willed ‘yes sir’s from the other guardsmen. It wasn’t long before the entire group were in positions around the clearing while some of the survey team made their way straight to the obelisk.

Tymon was with another guardsman, one ‘Andrukas’ as they both took up positions covering one of the flanks around the obelisk.  
“What’d you reckon it is Andru?” Tymon asked the more paranoid looking guardsman.  
“I dunno, could be some necron shit” Andrukas answered, his lasgun held tightly in hand as his eyes scanned his section of the perimeter.  
“Oh right.. Lemme guess, Khorne’s here too?” Tymon retorted, although he had heard rumours about a race of purely mechanical xenos, he had never seen any reports confirming as much, at least he was never allowed to see any. Andrukas scoffed at the mention of the blood god while Tymon continued:  
“Mate! Some of your theories you know, are completely wack, I mean, I get that there’s some classified shit out there but… Roboxenos? Really?” Andrukas quickly shot back with:  
“You do know we’re basically Canaries for the imperium, right?” Tymon facepalmed as Andrukas went on another one of his rants.  
“Not dumb enough to be on some backwater pdf, but not clever enough to be Kasrkin or Tempestus” Tymon simply waited for his fellow soldier to finish his rambling,  
“The 57th may as well be their fracking poking stick”  
“Yeah? Well at least the poking stick gives me food, and a place to sleep” Tymon answered as he raised his head to look at his fellow paranoid soldier.  
“Mmm aboard a smelly cruiser with 4 other boys in green, classy”

Their conversation was swiftly interrupted by what sounded like a panicked survey specialist rambling about something to Sergeant Jackson, the only thing that both Andrukas and Tymon could glean was that he was scared, terrified even, while Jackson simply didn’t seem to know how to answer.  
“What’s got him up tight?” was the only thing Tymon could ask, but before Andrukas could respond the air was filled with a sudden deep and loud mechanical ringing coming straight from the centre of the clearing. The obelisk, its carved and engraved symbols now glowing a distinct green, unleashed walls of similarly green energy in every direction that, seemingly harmlessly, swept over the surrounding area in random patterns, only for them to abruptly stop and disappear. Like clockwork, each of the guardsmen shouldered their lasguns and started searching their flanks, expecting to be attacked by… something. But this was unlike anything the guardsmen had seen, no one knew what to expect, they had fought orks, heretics, even the Eldar, but this… This was different.  
“What was that about Necron shit?” Tymon quietly asked Andrukas who, like the other guardsmen, was looking left and right with his lasgun at the ready. Less than a minute later, a green bolt of energy coming out of the other side of the clearing, suddenly cut through the air and struck the ground near two surveilling guardsmen, causing the area to erupt into an abrupt green explosion which engulfed them both as their screams were choked off, then it was quiet again.

For a moment, the silence was defeaning. Every single guardsman had their weapon pointed at the other forest, desperately trying to locate what had fired that energy bolt, suddenly:  
“MOVEMENT! 5 O’CLOCK LOCAL!” a guardsman called out at the top of his voice.  
“I SEE IT!” Tymon screamed back as both him and Andrukas brought their weapons to bear.  
“OPEN FIRE!” Commanded the sergeant as a flurry of red lasbolts sliced through the air towards the general direction where the green bolt came from. Less than a second later, a large, mechanical, eight legged creature came out of the forest and seemed to drift effortlessly over the clearing with an unnatural speed, darting towards the clearings far side where a couple more guardsmen were firing. They ran as soon as they laid eyes on it but one was too late as the mechanical horror simply impaled him on one of its legs, stopping at nothing to approach the other fleeing guardsmen while its weapon pointed towards Tymon,  
“Frak.. MOVE!” he yelled as he quickly sprinted out of the way, only to suddenly be thrown towards the obelisk at an unnatural speed by the shockwave of another green bolt. He flew head first against the structure like a ragdoll, then he fell to the ground almost lifeless and as he drifted out of consciousness. The words ‘full retreat’ screamed by sergeant Jackson were the last thing echoing in his mind, followed by nothing.


	2. Prospector 3

‘Full retreat’, the words continued to Resonate in Tymons head as he drifted in and out of consciousness. If a full retreat had been sounded, it meant all imperial assets were to withdraw immediately, no matter their previous objective. For as long as his injured body would let him, he pondered this thought, pondered the situation that would result in for him, was he alone? Had he been left behind by his brothers in arms? Through his seemingly failing vision, he caught a glimpse of one of his battle brothers, reduced to a lifeless corpse, his flak vest stained a dark shade of red. Though his injured body would let him see no more as he once again fell back into the black that was his unconscious mind.

One day… That was how long the half witted imperial scout teams lasted upon this wretched world before they unintentionally kicked the hornet's nest that was the canoptek and any plans of using the mon’keigh to leave the planet were snuffed out when their ‘Full Retreat’ was sounded. Her vox piece, previously intercepting the various imperial transmissions from the surrounding area, had once again become as silent as it was days prior and so, she again started to contemplate a lifetime alone on this mudball. Nevertheless, the patient striking scorpion stayed hidden, perched atop a branch on one of the taller trees, waiting for Canoptek activity to ebb once again. Sure the mechanical abominations had ignored her before, but that was before these imperials had gracelessly waltzed through the planet. Now the soulless machines were agitated, paranoid, searching for anything that wasn’t necron. One of the unliving creatures, something the eldar had come to know as a wraith, slinked its way nimbly and almost silently between the trees and over their roots, slowing to a halt almost directly beneath the branch that she was perched upon. Silence overcame her, apart from the occasional screech and cry of the indiginous wildlife. Its head twitched all over the place, left, right, then left again, searching its surroundings as one of those bushes retreated straight back into its hard shell, but eventually, it continued its way through the forest, quietly as before. It was starting to seem as though she was going to be here for a while.

Tymons injuries finally allowed him to wake up again, although with a head pain that was reminiscent of having his skull cracked open against a bulkhead and stapled back together by some servitor from the ass end of the maintenance division. His eyes, as soon as they squinted open, were saturated with a blinding orange light that was the sunset of Gamma-Eridanus 3, yet his surroundings were largely unchanged. He was still lying against the Alien obelisk, yet the grass seemed to have grown accustomed with his presence, no longer swerving out of its own way to cater for him, but it flinched as soon as he moved his head away from the blinding light. Slowly, but steadily, he brought his right arm between his eyes and the planet's sun and then he tried to prop himself up against the structure only to be forced back down by the head splitting pain that was plaguing him. For minutes, he lay there, almost falling out of consciousness again and again, but eventually he hoisted himself up despite the pain. Thankfully his injuries were restricted only to his head as the rest of his body complied without screaming in similar pain. Panting, he leveled his head with the ground around him as the pain started to ebb, there was no sign of the mechanical creature that had ransacked his squad and, as he finally got up to get a better look, he turned to inspect the obelisk which once again, was dormant, in fact everything around him seemed dormant. It did not take long for Tymon to find his Lasgun, although the weapon had seen better days, a piece of the barrel was bent down and its outer lens had shattered, the weapon was useless unless he could scavenge another lasgun barrel.

That was his first objective, he walked over to the body that was once his brother in arms... It was Rico... He had a hole in his chest from when the creature impaled him, the poor guy must have died almost instantly with his eyes frozen in a terrified and confused expression like that. Slowly, he brought his hand over Rico’s eyes and closed them,  
“May you rest in peace my brother”   
were the only words Tymon whispered as he looked around him, trying to find Rico’s weapon. Eventually he did, but his lasgun was in an even worse state than his own with its receiver assembly having been torn open revealing the emitter inside, but Tymon wasn’t looking for a receiver assembly. Quickly he took the weapon in his hand, detaching the barrel so that he could inspect it, but its outer lens had been shattered too. Just his luck, he was alone and unarmed on an alien world, sheer aggravation made him toss the broken barrel into the ground with a grunt causing the grass to flick away once again. Then it struck him, he was alone, unarmed, equipped with nothing but his survival bag and the armor on his back… how much food was he carrying? Hastily he unclipped the survival bag from his belt, letting it drop to the floor, then he opened it by the zip and peered inside. A locator beacon, his PDA, a rolled up hydration bag, he started to rummage through the contents, spilling some out on the floor around it and then he found them, his two nutrient blocks, one of them had a chunk already bitten out of it, that was all the food he had left.   
“Maybe… five days if I ration?” Tymon muttered to no one in particular as he started to contemplate the arguably hopeless situation he was finding himself in, only to stop himself moments later, sure he was alone, but that was only his immediate surroundings, maybe there were others that had been left behind. New objective, he had to find a functional, long ranged vox-box to establish contact with other survivors, if there were any. Still kneeling on the floor, Tymon pulled out his clunky PDA which was pretty much just a low resolution screen with a single vertical row of buttons beside it. He held the topmost button down and the device flickered into life with an astra militarum logo appearing in the middle and the words ‘hammer of the emperor’ flickering on beneath it, then a small rotating spiral beneath as the device booted up while a battery icon revealed 89% in the top left.

‘UPLINK TO FLEETCOM FAILED’ were the words that abruptly replaced the logo and slogan once the device had booted up, the option to ‘recover from previous state’ or ‘retry uplink’ appeared beside the two lowest buttons on the bottom of the screen. Tymon chose to try and uplink again in some vain yet hopeful attempt to reconnect with the 9th Recon fleet that were almost certainly gone by this time, but the same unfeeling message appeared on the screen, with the same two options. He sighed, selecting the second option and a map flickered into view showing Tymons current location, the clearing, thankfully the device still registered his location accurately. He zoomed out as far as the device would let him, wondering how much information it had actually saved when it was still uplinked to the fleet. 20 square kilometers with him in the centre, beyond that the map was blank but within this box, he saw various objective markers including his own, showing the route they had taken to get to the clearing. Among the objective markers, he saw one listed as ‘prospector 3’, that was where he and the rest of his team had initially been deployed to. At this point that was the only location that came to mind where he would be able to find a vox-box, food and maybe even a spare lasgun, but it was four kilometers away and on the other side of the forest that he came from before the attack. Circumventing it simply wasn’t viable, the forest stretched as far as the map could show him in either direction, so he had no choice but to walk back the same way he came and, with that realisation, he packed every spilled item back into his survival bag, clipped it to his hip and started on his way, picking up his defunct lasgun as he did.

She was still perched up on the branch, in the same position as she was mere hours prior and she had not seen any more Canoptek activity besides her close call with the wraith and one or two sightings of some of the taller, yet less surveillant ‘reanimators’ beyond the forest. With this in mind, the striking scorpion decided to drop down from her well hidden and defendable position in the tree, creating only silent and viscous ripples in the swamp like soil below. She remained crouched as she peered all around her with the aid of her helmet's threat detector… Nothing… Not a single damned thing, she really was alone again, not that the canoptek were any better company. Silently the Eldar waded through the ankle deep mud that was the soil, making her way back to her little encampment. Already the loneliness was getting to her. With only her own emotions to keep her company, she felt empty yet at the same time deafened by them, once again she contemplated the idea of being truly alone upon this world.   
_Enough_ , she had the mental fortitude to cope with these feelings and she had the discipline to logically deconstruct them. In fact, she already knew what she was feeling and why, so for the moment, she put them aside and focused. Right now getting back to her campsite was the priority, she was exposed and her encampment was defendable, there was plenty of time to contemplate her situation when she got back. But she still decided to leave her vox-piece on and once again, set it to broad spectrum scanning, just in case there was that one chance that she would hear a vox transmission from well… anyone...

The route back to prospector 3 seemed worse, the mud was thicker, colder and its temperature had started to seep through Tymon’s boots. It wasn’t long before he was starting to shiver all over with his flak vest and overalls slowly but steadily failing to maintain his body heat, yet he soldiered on, broken lasgun in one hand, PDA in the other. That’s when it came to him, an explanation as to why everything felt more difficult, apart from the theory that maybe his mind was already playing tricks on him; the day was ending and the sunset had been replaced with a slowly dimming blue sky. The planet must have less of a greenhouse effect than other terra-like worlds meaning colder nights. This realisation did him no good however, for he was still in the middle of this emperor-forsaken xeno rainforest, trudging through the swamp like mud that was starting to feel like slowly setting cement around his boots. He had to keep moving, what if the mud fully froze up, what would he do then? He checked his PDA to see how far he was from the prospector 3 site, his hands starting to gently shiver from what he was slowly coming to know as the nightly temperature of this world. The device shone into life, again revealing his current position. He was still one damned kilometer out and closing a maybe foot or two with each step… Then his hand failed him as the device came loose from his weakened grip, slapping into the viscous mud beside him. With a grunt of effort, he reached down and grabbed it back, pulling it from what turned out to be the suddenly very prying grip of the mud as tendrils of the stuff greedily tried to hold the device. This however did not stop him from swiftly retrieving it and bagging it. He just had to keep walking forwards and he’d eventually get there, and exactly that was what he did. 

At least an hour of travel had passed and the mud was thinning again, he was reaching the end of the forest and, to his happiness, relief and amazement, the prospector site was there, three tents (two of which were partially assembled), one stockpile and a wide circle of still glowing red markers for the landing zone, just like he remembered it.  
“oh THANK YOU GOD EMPEROR!!!!” Tymon cried out to no one in particular as he approached the small and neatly arranged cluster of makeshift buildings with new courage and vigour. Between him and the tents and stockpile, was the wide landing area which was largely charred by the drive plume of dropships regularly landing and taking off, but it offered no such resistance like the mud from the forest. Contrary to the clearing he had travelled from, there was no grass here and it looked more like a set of trees had simply been knocked down and cleared to accommodate this little encampment. He sprinted over the 10 meter wide landing area as fast as his old body permitted to the command tent with hope of finding a vox box in there, but this hope began to diminish. The closer he got, the more it looked as though this tent had been ransacked too, presumably by the same or similar mechanical horrors to the one he and his squad had encountered. Hope continued to drain from his face as he neared the tent and peered through a hole that had been torn through the fabric. Inside, there were tables upon which equipment was resting and once he was at the tent, he inspected the interior. Everything was broken, mangled beyond repair; a holotable with a hole the size of his fist through the top, some other piece of equipment with its electronic innards exposed and a vox-box, oh emperor the god fething damned vox-box, it's antenna was gone, some cables were hanging out of another fist sized hole and the microphone looked like it had been stepped on.  
“FRACK!” Tymon yelled, tossing his broken lasgun to the floor like a belligerent child and with a look of pure despair and so, the hopelessly screwed guardsman, continued to inspect the ruined command tent.

Vox-box, holotable, plasma microgenerator, datalink module, all components of the temporary command post rendered were rendered completely useless, but there was one undamaged item, and it was a portable heater... Like a moth to a flame, he went straight to the unpowered device. The cold was starting to get to him, his uniform and armour no longer able to protect him from the coming night. Once he was in front of the device he immediately began to inspect it. Did it require an active power supply? Or was it battery powered, could he turn it on now? His eyes and his shivering hands inspected every part of the device, accidentally dropping it as he did.  
“Gak!” He whispered harshly, his breath forming small temporarily lingering clouds in the air in front of him as he quickly picked the device back up. He found a switch on it, without a single thought he flicked it, only for something to fall off and onto the ground. He had to get himself together, at this rate, he was going to lose possibly his only heat source for the night, so he put it down and tried to find what had fallen off. He couldn’t create a fire now, the temperature was too low and his hands were starting to freeze so even if he wanted to he couldn’t. Then he found the piece that fell off the heater and to his utter relief, it was a battery pack, the heater was battery powered. Why they just had one lying around, he did not know and he did not care, he only turned the heater around so that he could slot the battery back into its place and, when he did, a set of lights flicked on with a gentle humming sound. Four of them, three green, one red and, above each light he could barely make out a number, four to one. What did they mean, days? Hours? Millenia? Why was imperial equipment never specific enough to detail actual timespans? He didn’t care, he continued to inspect the device and… there it was, another switch, larger than the other, again with no forethought he flicked it and then the device suddenly started emanating a warm, orange hue accompanied by a gentle hum.  
“Hah… HAHAAAH!! YES!!!” was all his mind let him scream as he turned the heavenly device to face him and when he did, he was blessed with the privilege of not freezing to sleep throughout the coming night.

Fueled by the discovery of the portable heater, Tymon’s confidence was renewed as he carried the device out of the ransacked tent and to the stockpile, setting it up so that it faced the entire array of boxes and, with his previous objectives once again at the forefront of his mind, he began to search. He went over each box, inspecting the writing on the sides: ‘Receiver/Transmitter’, most likely not a vox-box but nevertheless he, with a grunt of effort, slid the heavy crate off of another that read ‘Munition’, not that that would be of any use until he fixed his weapon. He undid the latches on the ‘Receiver/Transmitter’ crate, lifting its lid open and peering inside, revealing an antenna and a receiver dish of some kind padded nicely into the crate. It was a data link assembly and without any ships in orbit to uplink with, it was practically useless. He ignored it, going straight to the other crates that had been stacked up on top of and against each other: ‘Munitions’, ‘Plasma Microgen’, ‘Heating Elements’, as he saw that one, he asked himself why no one was briefed on the planets temperature cycle, ‘Tent assembly’, ‘nutrition bricks’, _‘Vox equipment’_...

 _Jackpot_ the guardsman thought to himself. It was stacked atop another crate but, with some effort, he managed to get it on the ground in front of him, then it took him less than a second to get the box open and peer inside, revealing exactly what the labelling claimed it was containing; a well padded, long ranged vox-box. Almost giddy with excitement, he took the device out of the crate that contained it, completely ignoring the padding that almost flew everywhere when he pulled it out. He inspected it, more careful than he was with the heater, looking for its on switch and when he found it he tried to turn it on, but it would not react. Once again, he felt what little hope and confidence he had in his survival fade, but he pressed on, checking to see if there was a battery installed and when he established that there was not, he checked the crate to see if there was one in there. He went through every corner of the storage box, through the padding that had not been accidentally tossed out, had he accidentally thrown the battery out with his carelessness? No, he found a part of the padding that had a slot with the same shape as the battery on the heater and... It was empty. Somehow, the vox-box did not come with a battery pack, or at least it was supposed to and some idiot loading tech forgot to put the emperor damned battery pack in the crate. The only other option was to try and get the plasma microgenerator up and running, but he had never started one up before, if he screwed it up the generator would either overload and blow up in his face, or just crap out and fail. Neither of those outcomes were desirable, but that’s when he realised he technically had another functional battery pack, and it was powering the heater. Reluctantly, he turned the heavenly device off and almost immediately the cold enveloped him again, it had gotten worse. He turned the device around and flicked that same switch as previously, letting the battery pack fall out of the heater and into his once again freezing hand. Then he slotted it into the vox-box and flicked the power on. It worked, the small display on the front was reading a couple of numbers, namely ‘300.5’. Wasting absolutely no time he pulled the microphone off and pushed the button on its left for a moment with his thumb and the words ‘BROADCASTING UN-ENC’ appeared on the display.

She couldn’t see any Canoptek on the way back to her encampment which was little more than a caved in and overgrown tunnel in the side of a hill with a small solar collector rigged up on the top of the entrance. She could feel the cold seeping through the gaps in her armour as she made her way back, but the suit's thermal panelling kept her warm for as long as it was charged and presently, power reserves were at 9%. In light of the lack of canoptek activity, the striking scorpion figured she would no longer need to keep her active stealth systems online so, with the neural interface her helmet had, she commanded them offline. The whole set of armour she was in slowly started to feel slightly heavier with a quiet humming sound that decreased in pitch and with that, her boots were no longer gently rippling through the now more viscous soil of the forest. There was one unintended but convenient side-effect the active stealth systems had and that was that they made it easier to wade through the viscous mud due to a magnetic field curve around the boots which initially just dulled her footsteps, they must have been forcing the mud around the boots each time she took a step. Now with a lower power consumption rate, she could focus what was left of her battery life on the thermal systems. She had practically memorised the surrounding area and, when the imperial forces had landed, she had seen the locations of two temporary command posts belonging to the mon’keigh. That would be next on her path to surviving this world, visit those command posts and see if there was anything she could use. Perhaps they knew something her survey team did not, sure the mon’keigh and their technology were primitive, but contrary to the small survey group her and her team had gated in with mere days ago, before she was left behind, the mon’keigh had ships in orbit and an entire regiment soldiers and scientists on the ground. It was not long before she arrived at her little camp and she went straight to the solar collector to check how much power it had accumulated today and was pleasantly surprised with a 10% increase from the day before. She went to pull the charge pack out of the collector, only to hear a sudden burst of static on her vox piece. It stopped her in her tracks. What was that? She checked her helmets logs, played it back a couple of times... That’s all it was, just a burst of static, but it cannot have been a random burst on that frequency because it was modulated. Her mind raced with possibilities, maybe there were some remaining imperial elements left on the world? When she tried to track it back to its source, she was unsuccessful, it was not on the air for long enough. But that did nothing to stop a certain irrational thought from repeating in her mind:  
 _I’m not alone._

The vox-box was working, but now he was freezing. He could not use the radio like this, hell, he probably wouldn’t even survive the night without getting hypothermia. Hastily he pulled the battery pack out of the radio and, slotting it back into the heater, had once again blessed with the right to not freeze to death overnight as he turned it on. Sitting himself in front of the heater, he pondered what to do, what else could be done besides going to sleep for the night. The dark blue hue that had overcast the sky, was replaced with an almost pure black, sprinkled with a galaxy's worth of tiny white little dots in the night sky. Tymon looked up, almost straining his neck as he did, and he couldn’t help but admire the clear sky above him for the next couple of minutes. There was a distinct lack of clouds and, in place of them, was… nothing... The skies, like the planet, seemed completely untouched. Well, apart from the mechanical creatures. He thought back to what Andrukas said before the attack:  
‘Could be some necron shit’  
He played it back to himself over and over again. Necrons, according to rumours, were a race of long dormant robotic xeno’s that were slowly awakening. Could Gamma-Eridanus have been one of their once dormant worlds? He chose not to strain his mind anymore than he needed to as he got up, picking up the heater and strolling his way over to one of the half assembled tents, looking for a place to lay his head for the night. He must have found what was meant to be the medical tent because beyond the framework that would have made up the walls, was a stretcher laid out on the floor. Looks like he had found his place to sleep for the night, he propped the heater up at what would soon become the foot of his makeshift bed and laid down, still fully clothed and armoured with his boots towards the heater. As he waited for sleep to pull his mind down to his subconscious, he again stared up at the night sky, those same words still playing over and over. Eventually he dignified his, hopefully still living battle brother with a response:  
“It's definitely some necron shit man…”


	3. Scorpion

Tymons first night on this world was not uninterrupted. Either the squawk or scream of some native creature would shock him into a state of half consciousness, or his own body would deny him the right to comfort on the medical stretcher that was his bed. However, when he did finally awaken to the start of the day, his body beneath his overalls and amour was damp with sweat while his eyes stung not only from the piercing daylight, but from his own sweat dripping into his eyes from his brows. Yawning, the guardsman stretched his arms outwards and then, propping himself up against his elbows, looked at the end of his makeshift bed to find the heater still doing its job, albeit a little too well throughout the night. Weary with tiredness, Tymon sat up with his flak vest still stuck to his torso. He unclipped the light piece of armour beneath his arms and, after removing his helmet, took the chestpiece off over his head and placed both pieces of equipment by his side. Immediately, his chest and his almost bare head were struck with a sudden cold as the fresh breeze drifted over his moist skin while a vain attempt at clearing some of the sweat from his head resulted in him simply running his hand through his centimeter long, unkempt brown hair. Other than this, he almost blankly stared forwards and at nothing in particular while his mind and body was waking up.

With another yawn, the guardsman grunted as he slowly got himself up and onto his feet, feeling his joints clicking and snapping from the hours of motionlessness in the cold night of his new home. While Tymon’s mind was at least partially awake, his body comparatively was not. Every bit of motion caused his joints to ache from the seemingly non-existent yet ever present pain that was his half asleep body. However, this would not last as Tymon picked up the heater, turned it off and made his way out of the half constructed tent where his bed resided. With the intent of getting himself some breakfast, he opened up his survival bag and grabbed the partially eaten slab of nutrient brick that was inside, taking a couple of frugal bites. While Tymon was not particularly hungry, he knew the importance of the day’s first meal, though the bland taste and slight smell of burnt cabbage was not particularly appetising. As he was chowing down, he remembered the stockpile and the crates he had moved the previous night, he also remembered that among them was a crate labelled ‘nutrition bricks’. He figured there must also be one for water purifiers or other survival equipment refills. With that thought he recalled the objectives he had set himself yesterday and, picking up the heater, went straight over to the stockpile which he had inadvertently left a mess last night. The vox-box remained untouched, yet there was an irrational sense of relief in Tymon as he made his way over to the clunky device, heater in hand, almost as though he thought something would come and destroy it just like the command tent. Although, considering his situation with the planet and its unliving inhabitants, that relief may not have been entirely irrational. He put the heater down next to the vox-box, resting atop one of the crates and turned it around, revealing the battery pack and, above it, this time only three lights were lit; two green, one red.   
“So it’s days then...” Tymon said to himself, noticing that the number three was red this time. Moments later, he removed the battery pack from the portable heater, slotted it into the vox-box and switched the power on. Then the guardsman watched as the small display flickered into life like last time with the numbers ‘300.5’ being shown again and, with admittedly little hope, Tymon reached for the microphone, and prepared to broadcast.

“This is private Tymon Kim, 57th Farsighters, broadcasting in the blind to any imperial forces planetside… I’m located at prospector three, but I’m alone and have no uplink to foxtrot charlie… If anyone can hear this, please respond…”  
She was snapped out of her meditative state upon hearing the vox-cast which was rapidly making the irrational thought of not being alone a reality. Quickly the eldar focused her thoughts once again, mentally commanding her helmet to analyse the broadcast, what frequency it was on and… It turned out to be the same frequency as that burst of static yesterday.  
“I repeat… this is private Tymon Kim, 57th Farsighters, broadcasting in the blind to any imperial forces planetside… I’m located at prospector three, but I’m alone and have no uplink to foxtrot charlie… If anyone can hear this, please respond…”  
The voice was sounding weary now, almost hopeless. She considered answering, but it certainly was not the voice of an eldar. Then she realised, if perhaps a little late; 57th farsighters, the alien name, he was a human, a ‘private’ in the scout legion that was sent to this world. She was alone on this vaul forsaken planet, with a mon’keigh. The striking scorpions rambling thoughts were promptly interrupted by a notification from her helmet’s HUD: ‘TRACKLOCK SUCCESSFUL, DISPLAY COORDS?’  
Kneeling at the entrance of the small tunnel her camp was set up by, she contemplated going to these coordinates as the notification hovered on the top right corner of her HUD while gently flashing. On one hand, she could try to use the mon’keigh to her own ends, like a tool to increase her own chances of survival, but on the other, could she really tolerate being alone on an alien world with only a small minded, dim witted being for company? She could just imagine some of the imbecilic things this excuse for sentient life would do, yet at the same time, he could be useful. With that final thought, she simultaneously listened, yet also ignored the part of her mind that yearned for company besides herself and mentally ordered the helmet to display the coordinates. Then she commanded her stealth systems online and started on her way to ‘prospector 3’ according to the coordinates given.

“I repeat… this is Tymon kim…” The guardsman, likely for the tenth time, spoke his message into the microphone and after waiting another twenty odd seconds for someone to answer, he had lost hope, placing it beside the vox-box with a sigh. At this moment he felt truly alone, sure whoever may be left on this planet probably does not have a vox-box, but it was seeming less and less likely that there were others besides him. No one had returned to prospector three and on his way back, he saw nothing but the trees and those weird looking bushes, not even other corpses. Then the guardsman froze in fear, did the ‘necrons’ use vox-boxes or some xeno equivalent? If so, he had just given away his position in the stupidest way possible. He looked around, quickly running back to the half built medical tent to find his lasgun and, with that, the other objective he had set himself came to his mind; fix his lasgun, the frontal lens was still shattered and without it, the lasgun was effectively a glorified heater with the added bonus of singeing ones hair if it was used it as such. Tymon then quickly made his way back to the stockpile to look through more of the crates, trying to put aside the terrifying thought of possibly having to abandon prospector three.

‘Survey supplies’, ‘mobile ordnance kit’ judging by the somewhat larger and older looking box, it was likely a mortar. Why such a heavy piece of hardware was taken to a survey mission, was beyond Tymon, but either way the kit was practically useless to him. The guardsman’s search went on; ‘Preserved H2O’, ‘Rangefinders’,  _ ‘Lasgun maintenance kits/comps’ _ . As soon as he read those words, he eagerly lifted the crate off of another, almost outright dropping it onto the ground as it slipped through his grip and landed upon his boots. Their hardened synth-leather caved slightly, but not to the point of crushing his feet. With ease, he withdrew his left boot from beneath the bulky crate, but his right boot would have to be levered out because now the crates' whole weight was resting upon it. With some effort, he managed to twist the boot out from beneath the crate resulting in it thudding onto the ground. Swiftly ignoring his now slightly warped boots, he quickly set about opening the crate and inspecting its contents and, once its latches were lifted and its lid opened, he peered inside, finding three familiar rows of cases, one of which was thinner than the others. This is where the hours of monotonously dismantling and reassembling his lasgun would come into play. He grabbed one of the thinner cases, took it over to his makeshift vox-box assembly which, as far as Tymon could tell, had remained silent this whole time, and opened it up to reveal a pristine and well padded lasgun barrel accompanied by three spare frontal lenses. Without a second thought, he picked up his lasgun, releasing the clamp that held its currently broken barrel into place and slid it off, immediately replacing it with the spare one.   
_ There’s no way this barrel is broken,  _ he thought and, with that, he pointed the weapon at the ground in front of him and pulled the trigger, causing the weapon to release an all too familiar beam of red directly into the ground, blackening the small spot it touched.  
“Right… Now I can defend myself” Tymon whispered. Although he was relieved at the fact that he could fight back if he had to, it was overshadowed by the thoughts that prompted him to fix his weapon in the first place. What would a single lasgun be able to do to another one of those eight legged horrors if twenty could not even slow one down. Once again, Tymon tried to ignore the thought of another engagement with one of those spider things as he instead tried setting about trying to solve his power crisis. There was three days worth of power in the heaters battery pack, probably less now that he used it in the vox-box. He remembered the plasma microgen crate and figured that there may be a couple of battery packs within, possibly even charged, or maybe an instruction manual for the microgenerator itself if things truly got that desperate.

It was a relatively short hike to ‘prospector three’, but she was in position; approximately 35.7 meters away from the origin point of that vox cast her helmet had intercepted and, around what looked like the camp’s stockpile, was the seemingly oblivious mon’keigh. Crouching beside a tree that was on the far side of the lit up landing area, the striking scorpion raised her shuriken pistol while the helmet displayed the projected trajectory of where her shots would land. She could kill him right here and he would have no idea what would have happened. In fact, in any fair engagement, she knew that she would win consistently, but the eldar put this thought to the side as she devised a plan to disarm and capture the primitive being alive if necessary. The scorpion had the element of surprise and with it, she had ample time to analyse her surroundings and plan her attack.   
_ The camp itself has virtually no usable cover. He will likely retreat to a defendable position if I reveal myself.  
_ With that thought, she scanned her surroundings, looking for anything he could hide behind while her helmet consistently pointed out the presence of this oblivious radical. The only place anyone could conceivably take cover behind was an upturned tree on the far side of the landing area, closest to the stockpile. Its roughly three foot diameter trunk would do well to stifle her weapons munition. From a distance, she inspected the uprooted tree; its back, relative to her, was against the forest which provided an ideal point of attack due to the cover those tree’s would provide if she flanked him. With that observation, phase one of her attack plan was completed; force him into that defensive position. The other components of her plan practically fell into line; Phase two, coax him into attacking so that she could pin him behind his cover in retaliation and finally, phase three; While he’s pinned, flank him through the trees and disarm him. Her plan was complete, her shuriken pistol and silent chainsword were primed, she was ready to execute while he was still oblivious and, with that, she quickly, but visibly and without her active stealth systems, darted towards the half constructed tent. Then, once she was in position, she brought them back online.

Tymon was moments before opening the almost daunting feeling ‘plasma microgen’ crate, but just before he could lift its latches, he heard;  
_ Footsteps? What the frack?  
_ His mind was suddenly racing, was he hearing things? Going insane? He had only slept one night on this wretched planet and it normally takes weeks for psychosis to set in, at least as far as he knew. Incautiously, the guardsman made his way outwards, towards the landing area to get a look at what that was and… he froze… that color scheme… he only saw its arm but he knew that deep blue and vibrant yellow all too well from previous briefings. In the blink of an eye he scrambled back to the stockpile and grabbed his lasgun, quickly darting his eyes all around his surroundings and finding a large upturned tree. With no second thoughts he vaulted the trunk, lasgun in hand and immediately ducked behind it, tightly gripping the weapon close to his unarmoured chest with both hands. If that was an eldar, he would not emerge victorious or even alive in a fair fight, this was a fact Tymon knew with absolute certainty. He was briefed on their weaponry, their weaknesses, their wargear, even parts of their anatomy, but despite wracking his mind for all of this information, he saw no use in any of it; ‘Eldar are physically weaker than humans’ well they wear armour, ‘Eldar shuriken weapons are partially controlled by the mind’, all that means is that they can attack at the speed of thought, none of this helped the situation he was presently in. He strained his neck, turning to get an idea of where this less than welcome xeno was.   
“Oh frack you…” Tymon whispered through gritted teeth when he saw the armoured enemy eyeing up the stockpile. Seconds passed and his observations only worsened when he saw the damned xeno open up the nutrition bricks’ crate, it had found his food. Could they even eat nutrition bricks? No matter, he had to attack, it was about to take away what was possibly the only edible food source on this planet. He theorised, one clean shot to its head should kill it, could it truly be that simple? Once again, he gave no further thought as he quietly primed his lasgun, resting it upon the trunk as he took the long-faced xeno in his weapons sights and squeezed the trigger.

In the blink of an eye, a thin but bright beam of red seared the air between the lasgun and its intended target yet the eldar effortlessly evaded the lasbolt and slipped behind the stockpile almost as though it had foreseen the attack. This lasbolt was quickly answered by two shots from the striking scorpions shuriken pistol, forcing Tymon to duck as they screamed twisted melodies while darting over his head with unnatural speed. Silence overcame the area for the next two seconds as the guardsman poked his head up from behind the upturned tree, ready to fire again, but the blue and yellow warrior was nowhere to be seen. That very fact shot fear into Tymon’s mind as he, completely oblivious to the fact that he was exposing himself, came up from behind his defendable position while his eyes scanned his surroundings. Nothing… Then a twig snap… Behind him… He spun on his heels, lasgun in hand and there it was charging towards him while nimbly darting over the roots and between the trees. Instinct kicked in as he discharged his weapon in the general direction of his rapidly incoming adversary. His shots missed, either because he had no time to properly aim his weapon, or because the eldar seemed to merely slink out of the way of all incoming las bolts, all but one. It seared the edge of the warriors helmet, causing the release of a muffled yet female grunt, but before he could hit her again, the eldars chainsword struck his weapon right out of his hands. The unarmoured Tymon was then suddenly greeted with a swift kick to the chest, knocking him down and against the tree. He was about to get himself up and go for his lasgun again, but an array of rapidly moving teeth from her chainsword mere centimeters away from his neck stopped him.

The xeno held its pistol to its hip, only for it to be kept there by some unseen force as it moved that same armour clad hand up to the damaged helmet, there was a deep black scorch-mark accompanied by some minor deformation where the bolt had hit. How the hell did the eldar survive a shot to the head. With a bit of effort, the victorious adversary wedged a finger beneath the helm and, with a hiss and click, its centremost piece came free revealing a somewhat feminine yet eerily human looking face with fairer skin and almost no notable blemishes. Following that, she moved that same hand to the back of her helmet and, with possibly an irritated grunt released  _ something _ there too as the rest of her helmet came off with a mere shake of her head. The eldar’s deep red hair then, as it came loose, fell to its full length around two finger sized pointed ears, seemingly uncaring of the fact that her helmet had just fallen to the ground. Then her attention was focused entirely on Tymon as she shot an undistracted glare straight at him. Why had she not yet killed him, there was every opportunity to do so right in front of her, but she was taking none of them. This did not stop the guardsman from anticipating death however, the thought scared him; he was not giving his life in glorious battle, instead he was pinned against a tree trunk by her moving toothed blade.  
_ Feth this… _ Tymon thought, if he was going to die, he was going to die screaming.

“GO ON THEN!!!!! KILL ME!!!! XENO SCUM!!!” Screamed the ever patriotic guardsman at his adversary as loud as his strained vocal chords let him.  
“MY LIFE FOR THE EMPEROR!!!”  
“STOP BLEATING! MON’KEIGH!” She yelled in return, silencing the guardsman as an irritated glare of hers pierced his eyes. Still straining his neck to avoid the blade, Tymon tried to anticipate what would happen next, but nothing came to mind apart from some stories about eldar taking humans as slaves or simple bodies to be tortured.   
_ Frack! _ Tymons mind screamed in fear, could she be one of those eldar? He tried to remember the briefings about the various different xeno’s publicly known to man, supposedly the ‘Drukhari’ were a faction of eldar who did this, but they bore armour much different than what he was seeing, at least according to his memory.

“Have you found others?” She asked with a strange accent and almost stunted speech but no longer yelling. Tymons mind now somewhat at ease with the fact that she was no Drukhari, struggled to answer the poorly phrased question:  
“What… other guardsmen?”  
“Yes, are there others!” She answered, sounding more irritated now.  
“Don’t you think they’d be here?!!?!” Tymon shot back.  
“Give my question an answer!!!” She demanded, her tone escalating once more. Flinching slightly, Tymon answered again.  
“I doubt it… They called a full ret~” The eldar interrupted dismissively.  
“I know what your full retreat is, I ask only are there others with you!” Once again her inexperience with speaking the language of low gothic came through with her stunted and heavily accented sentence.  
“No… no, I’m alone right now” Tymon answered. The eldar woman probably looked confused for a moment, though this did not last as a stoically blank looking expression formed replacing that relief.   
“Then why did you stop your communication?” When those words left her mouth, Tymon immediately felt both angry and stupid, she had eavesdropped on his broadcast.  
“You were eavesdropping?” was all that Tymon could muster in response.  
“It was not encrypted” She said, sounding as uncaring as she seemed initially.  
_ UN-ENC… Un-Encrypted… _ Once again, Tymon felt stupid as he realised what ‘UN-ENC’ likely meant. Moments after his realisation however, she pulled the chainsword away from the guardsman’s neck with two words:  
“Get up” Tymon, still confused at the absurdity of the situation, clicked his no longer strained neck somewhat before standing up, though his confusion got the better of him as he asked:  
“What, you’re letting me live?”  
“If you can be of use” That response caught him off guard as she stowed the chainsword on her back while mounting the pistol to her hip, that unseen force once again holding it in place.  
“What the frack do you mean with that?” She was expecting an answer similar to this. As far as she could tell, he had no idea that she was in an almost identical situation.  
“I am stranded too and I intend to survive.. If you will not aid that, you are a threat” With this calculative response, she pointed at the shuriken pistol now on her hip:  
“If you are a threat..” the eldar paused, trying to think about how to best convey this message with her somewhat limited knowledge of the language she was trying to speak in:  
“Then I don’t need you alive… clear?” At least relatively confident he got the idea, she awaited a response while picking up the damaged facepiece of her helmet.  
“Right…” Tymon was quickly growing to dislike the situation he was finding himself in. She had pretty much full control over his fate right now and so, he reluctantly asked:   
“What’s the plan then?”  
The Eldar was inspecting her damaged helmet before she tossed it back to the ground, irritatedly stating:  
“We are coming to my camp now… to take equipment here” With that, she started making her way towards the perimeter of prospector three. As far as she was concerned, she had lost her helmet due to sheer carelessness.  
“Okay then…” were the only words that barely even escaped Tymon’s lips as he went to grab his lasgun.  
“That stays here” She quickly said before he was able to even touch the weapon. She was not even facing Tymon as she told him to leave his weapon behind. Bewildered, the guardsman shot back, almost stuttering:  
“Can I at least get my vest and helmet then?”


	4. Bootlick

Wearing the armour that Tymon had fallen asleep in the night before, he and his eldar captor were well on their way to her camp for what seemed like hours to him, but was in actuality little more than thirty minutes. Every step the guardsman took required at least twice the effort of a normal footstep as he withdrew his boot from the viscous shin deep mud only to plunge the other right into the sludge again and again, yet the eldar’s boots seemed to effortlessly wade through the mud. But unbeknownst to Tymon, she was being assisted by her armour's stealth systems. To make matters worse for him, she was moving at an almost hurried pace causing the panting Tymon to come to a stop as he, between breaths, had to almost beg for the eldar to slow down.  
“Wait… Wait…” The eldar came to a stop, turning to face Tymon as he was slightly hunched over, resting his hands on his gently crouched thighs.  
“I need to rest…” He panted, almost all in one word. While patches of sweat grew beneath Tymons arms from trying to keep up with the almost speed walking eldar, she seemed entirely unphased by their terrain, aside from an irritated glare that started to form on her face accompanied by a quick eye-roll.  
“How the frack are you so quick...” Tymon asked nobody in particular after having caught some of his breath back. While she understood that everyone needed rest, she expected the guardsman’s stamina to last at least a bit longer than what she was seeing, though it had slipped her mind that she was being aided by her suits' stealth systems. The eldar decided not to dignify Tymon’s half voiced question with a response, opting instead to impatiently ask a question of her own:   
“How long for you to rest?” Once again, her accent and relatively poor understanding of low gothic syntax came through as she inquired.  
“I dunno… Frack I should have brought water…” he practically coughed up as he stared at the ground. Again, the eldar granted him an irritated eye roll while otherwise maintaining her glare on him, though this time she decided to answer his proverbial call for help.  
“There will be water at my camp”  
“Could I have some??” The guardsman almost excitedly perked his head up at her, only now noticing her irritated expression, but only for it to quickly turn into a dumbfounded look of confusion at his response.  
“If you need water you will drink!”   
“Alright! Alright! I was just asking!” Tymon shot back, though it took him a couple of moments to realise how stupid of a question his truly was. The still dumbfounded eldar scoffed at him and turned back around.  
“Tell me when you are ready” she commanded as she began to observe their surroundings.

Unassisted by her helmet this time, the eldar did what she could to maintain at least a decent situational awareness, though she was regularly interrupted by her thoughts on the situation she now found herself in. The ‘Mon’keigh’ was starting to seem more like a liability than anything else, needing rest while she did not. In fact, so far the human had lost her her helmet and was asking stupid questions. Though these thoughts were quickly overshadowed by that little part of her mind that had yearned for company before she met him as it consistently rationalised keeping the primitive being around. Though she listened to none of these thoughts, opting to put them all aside as she waited for Tymon to catch his breath which did not take him particularly long for him to do so as he straightened his back out, ready to wade through the mud again.  
“Alright, let’s keep going.” said the guardsman, no longer speaking between his breathless panting. With that, they continued their way to her encampment, though she moved at a slower pace this time, mindful of the fact that Tymon did not have the same equipment as herself.  
Another half hour of walking brought the pair to their destination as the mud began to shallow out on their approach to her camp. Though Tymon was no longer panting, his legs, from the second half of the hike they had just taken, were aching with a fiery sensation that was his muscles screaming at him for a rest. He caved in to their proverbial begging as he with no words and a groan, let himself fall to the ground on all fours, quickly rolling himself into a sitting position with his legs stretched out in front of him, not exactly pleasing the eldar he was accompanying:  
“What you are doing?? Get on your feet!” She yelled impatiently, not in the mood for the guardsman requiring another rest, but Tymon was not in the mood for any more of her demands.  
“I’ve just walked.. An hour at least.. And my legs.. Feel like FRACKING twigs…” He yelled the swear word as loud as his vocal chords let him.  
“So  _ please.... _ Give me a break… Also where’s the water!?” He quickly adopted an impatient tone of his own as he followed up on the eldars promise that he would be able to drink when they got to her encampment. Taken aback by his suddenly very defiant and stubborn attitude, she simply stared for a moment despite Tymon not noticing or caring, though she quickly turned around and crouched slightly as she entered the overgrown tunnel where she had stashed the majority of her survival equipment. Moments later she returned, holding something which, to Tymon, looked nothing like a hydration kit, or any kind of water bottle for that matter but, to his confusion, she held the oblong shaped  _ thing _ to her now agape mouth as it released a jet of water straight in. Confused, he stared at the device as she stepped towards him, holding it about a foot away. Before taking the device from her hands, he stared at it for a moment, then turning to look at the eldar who eventually bore a similarly confused look until she impatiently moved it closer to his face:  
“Take it!” She commanded. Tymon took the eldar’s ‘hydrator’ out of her hand, his confused stare once again turning back to the device as he inspected it.  
“Well... how do I use it then?” Scoffing and rolling her eyes, she wordlessly pointed out a small button on its side. Instinctively Tymon pressed said button which immediately caused water to jet out of the end facing away from him. He recoiled slightly, turning the hydrator around and almost hesitantly opened his mouth before he pressed the button again while his captor put her head in her hands, covering up a gentle smile and slight chuckle at the whole proverbial display she was witnessing. Tymon quickly stopped drinking when he noticed her poorly hidden and amused expression:  
“Are you laughing at me?!?” Tymon asked, still sitting on the floor and now filled with disbelief, but she answered with yet another small bout of withheld laughter as he drank some more and got up with an insulted sounding:  
“Frack you!” while handing the hydrator back to her.

Once she had stowed the hydrator and stopped chuckling, the pair were simply standing there and Tymon was waiting for  _ something _ to happen:  
“So what now”. Again, with no words, she went up to the entrance however instead of going inside this time, she picked up the solar collector that was resting upon the roof of the tunnel's entrance. But to Tymon, this simply looked like a random piece of xeno technology. She then placed it on the floor, folding its wide, black, reflective yet fragile looking panel in half before disconnecting it from the larger component it was mounted to, giving Tymon a better look at what he believed to  _ perhaps _ be some kind of battery. Compared to her armour, the half that Tymon was able to look at appeared much simpler; a cylinder with a small control panel or readout of some kind as well as the mounting mechanism that held the panel in place on top, though before he could get a better look, his captor, with that now typically demanding voice, told him to:  
“Pick it up” Taken aback by this, he stammered out his response:  
“W-what?”  
“You are taking it back, pick it up” Now he knew what she wanted and, more than anything, it insulted him.  
“You really brought me out here so I could  _ carry your gak _ back to prospector 3...” As far as Tymon was concerned, he was about to be reduced to a braindead cargo servitor with the addition of a superiority complex ridden xeno giving him orders.  
“JUST pick it up!” She reiterated. The guardsman saw no way out of this situation, she was armed and he had practically no idea where he was so an escape would not be viable. Reluctantly, he walked up to the disassembled solar collector in front of the eldar and, with a grunt of effort, picked up both parts of the device with his mud stained hands and started walking again, though he did not get very far before his captor decided to comment.  
“That was not complicated yes?” Tymon did not have to fully understand what her stunted sentence said to know how downright condescending it was and he had had it. It was bad enough that he was only being kept alive because he could be of some use to her and that she seemed to have the patience of a flea looking for blood to suck, now she was being condescending. With frustration, he tossed both pieces to the somewhat harder ground her encampment rested upon and, as he did, the panel opened up slightly and hit a rock beneath, denting the whole surface outwards. The eldar suddenly looked terrified, tensing up as she saw the collector fall to the ground.

“NO!!” The eldar screamed before Tymon’s inevitable tirade began.  
“Alright if I am to become your FRACKING BOOTLICK for the duration of my stay on this MUDDY EMPEROR FORSAKEN WARP HOLE, then THE LEAST you could do is treat me with THE SMALLEST MODICUM of respect!” He screamed as the eldar’s face turned from one of mild irritation to one of almost extreme distress as Tymon most likely badly damaged the device.  
“WHY?!” she yelled with all her might, gesturing at the device but doing nothing to intimidate the pissed off Tymon.  
“Oh I don’t know maybe it's because you’re treating me like a FETHING HALF WITTED SERVITOR!!!” He shot back as his sarcasm rapidly turned to anger.  
“I should END you here and now” The eldar responded, while drawing her shuriken pistol and pointing it to his face, but he barely reacted to the slim yet wide barrel now staring at him, in fact he borderline provoked her.  
“GO ON THEN! You’ve had PLENTY of opportunities earlier yet I’M STILL FRACKING HERE!” He screamed in response. The eldar was taken aback, he had called her bluff. She had no intention to kill him, he could still be of use, though that was starting to seem like the most viable alternative. For seconds, Tymon stared down the barrel of the eldar weapon, waiting for something to happen as fear for his own life finally started to set in, yet to his surprise, she lowered her weapon and spoke with an angered reluctance.  
“Would it be better if I carry too?!?!” It was the one thing she was trying to avoid, yet it was starting to seem like the only alternative besides putting a shuriken through his skull. Surprised at the eldar’s question, Tymon stammered momentarily as he tried to answer.  
“W-WELL!...” He started off, tone raised, expecting another screaming fest to ensue, though he trailed off as he fully processed what she had just said.  
“Yeah!.. It would be” Still surprised by the direction this conversation went in, Tymon waited for an answer and for things to progress.  
“Alright!.. I will carry the star collector.. And you will carry something else” That reluctance that was previously in her voice remained as she, with an expression of both despair and aggravation, went to pick up the pieces of her solar collector.  
“Star~ what?” Tymon had no idea what she meant by ‘Star collector’, though this earnt him more yelling.  
“I DON’T KNOW THE WORDS!”  
“Jeez! alright!” Tymon shot back after he recoiled at her somewhat sudden outburst, contrary to contributing what would inevitably become another fight.  
“I’m gonna go pick something up now!”  
“Quiet!” While there was urgency in her voice, all that Tymon heard was another insult and so, he answered in kind.  
“Oh you be quiet!” But she very quickly gestured at him to get down as she ducked to the ground, staring at something in the forest. Then he saw it too; in the somewhat near distance, a mechanical creature with a certain familiarity, yet lankiness that the spider creature did not possess, slowly but gracefully crawling over the surface of the mud ridden planet.

It took Tymon perhaps a second to find cover on the other side of the cave entrance, as the eldar remained motionless and stayed where she was. While she knew the creature as a Canoptek Wraith, Tymon knew it as nothing and she was desperately hoping that the ‘mon’keigh’ would not do something as stupid and brash as attack it, though he seemed to know better as he stayed out of sight. The wraith slowed down, its body raising slightly and turning over towards the two survivors, revealing its somehow coherently twitching head, scanning the entire area with an unliving speed. It then slowly and silently advanced towards them. Tymon, trying to get a better look at the wraith, peaked out from behind his cover, only for long enough for a quick glimpse, yet he regretted it instantly as its twitching head momentarily looked its eye on him. With that he hid, yet the wraith seemed to take no interest as it continued to scan the area for what seemed like minutes. The striking scorpion, expecting an engagement that the pair would most likely lose, had her pistol not directly pointing at it, but ready to aim, primed to pierce a shuriken right through its robotic eye, though she would not need to. Just as the wraith had stopped its slow advance, it began a similarly slow retreat, turning its strange body away from the pair again and by proxy, its unblinking eye as it continued its previous path, low and gracefully, then she waited until it was a good distance away.  
“It's gone” The eldar called out to the cowering guardsman who, after a second of looking around, came out from his position behind the outcropping tunnel entrance. While she was calm, Tymon was not. His stunned and almost terrified face darted around for a moment before eventually getting itself together.  
“One of those things took out my squad” was all he could say at their encounter, though the eldar would not answer this statement of his and, after some moments of waiting, she renewed her ‘orders’ from previously.  
“Pick up some items to carry” Still shocked from the close encounter, he wordlessly obeyed this order of hers.

It was not long before both were once again trudging through the rapidly deepening mud on their way back to prospector three, though this time her stealth gear was inactive as she was trying her best to conserve power after Tymon had destroyed her solar collector. Just like their route towards her encampment, the flow of time was distorted to the guardsman as he carried an almost precariously piled stack of her various items, yet as they marched, the words of his fallen brother in arms ‘Andrukas’ came to mind again. Still somewhat stunned at what had happened not even an hour prior and with the objective to take his mind off of his calves which were slowly starting to ache again, he decided to break the silence between them and get his questions answered:  
“So the things on this world then… Are they necrons?” He inquired as his boots slapped through the mud.  
“Canoptek” was her emotionless answer.  
“Canoptek?” Tymon repeated, but there was no reply.  
“The feth are canoptek?” This ended up being a question she answered.  
“They…” she paused, slowing down for a moment.  
“They are… like your servitors, but necron” She finally managed as she combed through her mental dictionary of low gothic which was based almost entirely on communications she intercepted with her vox piece. Though she was not hopeful that her explanation made sense, to her surprise, Tymon seemed to understand.  
“So they’re like… repair things? Maintenance things for them?” Once Tymon answered, she was back on the move.  
“Yes” She gave no thought to this response as she reached her previous pace again.  
“Alright…” Tymon answered under his breath. So it was true, all the paranoid ramblings of Andrukas and how the imperium was hiding information about the necrons and who knows what else. At the same time he asked himself if the 57th were truly just canaries or poking sticks for the imperium. They had been his family and his home since he left his birthworld of beta fortanis, he could not fathom the fact that they were that borderline worthless to the imperium. Quickly he pushed this aside as he decided to ask something else, not one of interest, but one to simply avert the other questions his mind began to ask.

“So what’s your name then?” He asked between breaths.  
“Reason?” She answered, almost dismissively.  
“What, my reason for asking?” Confused with the eldar’s somewhat broken speech. The silence from her was almost an affirmation as the pair continued walking without a condescending or correcting comment from the eldar.  
“I dunno... I mean... you probably don’t know my name” He was about to continue before he was interrupted.  
“Tymon Kim” This answer stunned him.  
“What?!”  
“From your communication” She followed up, with that Tymon rapidly understood what she meant.  
“Right…” The guardsman was again, almost embarrassed at his stupidity in that situation, though he persisted.  
“Well, ain’t it only fair that I know yours then?” He again spoke between breaths as the pair hiked on.  
“You don’t need to” Once again, she was bearing the same condescending tone that caused Tymon to throw her collector to the ground. But this time, he was not that close to throwing another proverbial fit, opting instead to find his own name for her.  
“Alright then… knife ear” He said, calling upon slang terms he had heard before. Though he was not necessarily expecting a reaction from her, she did slow down for a moment. Tymon could not see her face, yet as her pace slowed, she felt hurt. Her stoic bastion of a facial expression suddenly retreated for a moment, only to be replaced by one of sadness as he struck that nerve, though she quickly stowed this feeling and continued to march onwards.   
“I’ll call you knife ear.” He reiterated, a bit quieter than moments ago. By this point, the eldar’s typically irritated demeanour had returned as she continued wading through the mud but, almost just to spite her human co-survivor, she sped up slightly as she stowed and suppressed her sensitivities.

She maintained her accelerated pace for the entire route back to prospector three, but she was still getting used to no longer having a helmet. To make matters worse, the fact that the end of the day was growing ever nearer was rapidly being made apparent by the relatively bright sky starting to take a darker blue hue while the air around them grew colder, not that it slowed their progress. Despite their somewhat stunted conversational moments prior where the eldar earnt the name ‘knife ear’ from Tymon, the pair were still somewhat shaken by the close encounter with the wraith and, after another short rest at what Tymon believed to be the halfway mark, the pair continued throughout the evening until they arrived. Once again, Tymon’s calves were killing him and, when they finally crossed the designated landing area where the lights had since turned off from a lack of charge, he sought to put the various items he was carrying down as soon as they reached the tents.   
“Home sweet frackin’ home” Tymon muttered to himself as he sat down beside the pile of items he had made next to the medical tent. ‘Knife ear’ on the other hand seemed very much in shape, putting down the broken solar collector next to him.  
“What are you saying?” she asked him confusedly, having overheard his muttering.  
“Nothing…” he mumbled, glancing at her as she asked, only to quickly look away again, stretching his legs out on the floor with a pained groan.  
“Are you injured?” though the question was typically one of concern, her voice conveyed no such feeling, earning her a somewhat snarky response from Tymon:  
“Why the warp would you care?” She scoffed at his response as she went over to where the pair had first greeted each other with weapons fire, seeking to find her helmet while Tymon had nothing further to say nor the energy for another drawn out argument, however his rapidly drying throat began to demand water. After some moments of giving his legs a break, he got up and went over to the crate with ‘preserved H2O’, opening the box and pulling out an actual water bottle from the dozens that were within, completely ignoring the empty hydration kits as he opened it and drank at least half of the bottle in one go. Following this, he strapped the bottle to his survival kit and went over to the place where she had told him to leave his weapon, earning him an encounter with his co-survivor as she was carrying the remains of her helmet. Tymon’s fatigue and the eldars lack of spatial awareness as she inspected her helmet caused them to bump into each other, the components of her helmet falling right out of her hands and cluttering to the floor while an irritated glance shot across her face.  
“See where you are going!” Her lack of knowledge in the language of Low Gothic was now starting to shoot her in the foot as this time, he did not know what she was trying to say.   
“Wh-...” A stammering Tymon struggled to find a response, however his stammer devolved to a sigh and a sarcastic: “Sure!” accompanied with the most ingenuine smile he could possibly muster to which the eldar simply rolled her eyes and made her way to the stockpile

‘Knife ear’; the two words continuously resonated in her mind as she walked, the pieces of her helmet in hand. Once she got there, she laid them out on one of the crates apart from her face piece which seemed to have suffered the most. Picking it up, she tried to inspect the damage that was done to her helmet by Tymon’s lucky shot. The bolt had carved its way right through one of the sides of the faceplate and, while the damage seemed to be largely superficial, it in actuality had struck one of the main connection points for the helmet's HUD. She still had control over her suit through backup neural interfaces, however she no longer had the helmets threat detection capabilities or any more direct readouts. Annoyed at the damage she had let happen to her helmet, those thoughts were rapidly swept aside by the words ‘knife ear’ again searing through her mind and each time it spoke those words, she would feel an almost childish self-consciousness about her ears. She reached her left hand up to her left ear and, brushing her hair aside, ran her hand up the delicate and sensitive skin with her finger and thumb, though quickly stopping as she almost protectively cupped her whole hand around it.  
‘Knife ear’ The words brought an almost distressed sigh through her lips as her mind repeated it again and again.  
_ Enough  
_ She suppressed the feeling the words brought on as she went back to inspecting her helmet, now was not the time to allow her emotions to take hold. Further inspection of the face piece revealed more and irreparable damage; even if the connection point worked, the projector crystals that allowed her HUD to function had fractured, if she tried to use her HUD now, it would be a static filled mess. Annoyed, she put the face piece down on the crate and stared into the middle distance. Then a footstep, something was threatening her, it was armed, she knew it. With no hesitation, she spun around on her heels, removing the shuriken pistol from her hip mount and pointing it at a stunned Tymon, who quickly aimed his lasgun at her in response.

“woah-woah-WOAH!” Tymon exclaimed a couple of times as he was suddenly greeted by ‘knife ear’ holding her weapon to him, hastily Tymon shouldered his lasgun from the relaxed idle position he was originally holding the weapon at.  
“Put it down!” was all she answered as Tymon stepped back twice, his heart beating out of his chest.  
“I’m not gonna shoot you! I was just getting my weapon!” This did nothing to calm the paranoid eldar down as the pair pointed their weapons at each other's heads.  
“Okay?! Look!” With that, Tymon slowly lowered his weapon, he considered taking this opportunity to burn her face off with a single shot, though, to him it always seemed like she was one step ahead. He decided not to risk another fight as he continued to lower his weapon. To the guardsman’s relief, the eldar did the same, albeit somewhat slower than him until she finally holstered her’s against her hip. Though now the pair were once again, just standing opposite each other, Tymon carrying his lasgun and ‘knife ear’ leaning against one of the crates, as their eyes looked everywhere but each other. Eventually a somewhat silent Tymon pointed back towards one of the tents with his right hand while the left kept the weapon against his chest:  
“Ummm… I’m gonna go to bed now…” Not waiting for any sort of response from the eldar, he began to step backwards however, before he could turn around, she impatiently interjected:  
“We need to carry more!” However this was met with a relatively uncaring voice from Tymon.  
“Not today I won’t” He said as he started making his way over to the medical tent.  
“Yes!” Again, the impatient eldar interrupted. This finally got Tymon to stop walking as he turned around to face her again, preparing for another argument, though he ended up sighing.  
“Look… I don’t know if you even feel the cold, or if you’ve got some gizmo in your suit that stops you from freezing your tits off, but it gets ridiculously cold at night and my ballsack will be frozen off before we even get halfway” The exasperated guardsman finished and, while she knew very little about what words he was using, she got the general idea and had nothing further to say as she simply stared at him for a moment, but then it hit her, she had no method of power generation, her armour had limited charge and, just like Tymon, the lower temperatures would affect her just as much if not more. 

Tymon was turning around to walk off again but the eldar interrupted.  
“Wait!”  
“Hm?” Tymon turned back to face her, but she could not even look him in the eye as she realised that she was about to ask for his help. He had clearly survived at least one night, the question was how and the other question was whether or not it would work for her too. Now all she had to do was find the right words, though once again, this is where her lack of low gothic hit her. A few seconds passed and the confused Tymon simply turned around with a sarcastic:  
“Good talk”  
“Wait I…” Again, Tymon turned around, though now bearing a confused and aggravated look as the eldar still could not even look him in the eye.  
“My armour stops me from…” she stopped, knowing what she wanted to say, but not how to.  
“From what?” He responded, looking slightly less aggravated now.  
“From…” With that, she wrapped her arms around herself, making a shivering motion and, thankfully Tymon knew what she was trying to say:  
“From… getting cold?”  
“Yes yes but it uses… energy” The embarrassed eldar managed to say. While she could not fathom the fact that she was about to ask a ‘Mon’keigh’ for help, Tymon had no idea yet where this was going and remained entirely confused as to why she could not even look him in the eye.  
“Right…” He answered slowly.  
“And… there is not much and you broke my star collector~” Tymon interrupted with a scoff, again she mentioned the ‘star collector’ and Tymon did not want to listen to broken ramblings about how he damaged this ‘star collector’.  
“Ugh… is that all this is about?!” Now she had no trouble looking him in the eye as she decided to give up, scoffing.   
“FORGET IT!” She yelled as she started to storm off, leaving Tymon even more confused than he was moments prior, but with that he started to realise that by ‘star collector’ she might have meant solar collector, so he decided to take a shot in the dark.  
“Wait, you mean solar collector?” This quickly brought her back with new hopes of getting Tymon to understand.  
“Yes! Yes! Yes! Solar Collector!” The embarrassed expression nowhere to be seen as a sudden bout of enthusiasm appeared on her face.  
“Right, right and your armour keeps you~ oh...” Tymon interrupted himself as he just came to understand her situation, her armour kept her warm and now she has no way to recharge it.  
“Yes! Yes! Do you understand?!” That completely uncharacteristic enthusiasm remained as she eagerly awaited his response.  
“Yeah… gak” For a moment, Tymon felt sympathy for the eldar who was slowly turning from his captor to someone who may actually need to depend on him and it was not long before he realised this.  
“So you’re asking me for help?” As soon as those words exited the guardsmans mouth, her enthusiasm drained from her face as she once again could not even look him in the eyes. With a deep embarrassment in her voice, she answered:  
“Yes…” As she did, she realised that she would more than likely still have her solar collector if she had not tried to use him to her advantage. Though once again, that small but loud part of her mind yearning for company began to rationalise the situation, despite the fact that it had already happened.  
“Okay… I’ll help you, but only if you just…” Tymon trailed off while the eldar grimaced at what he was saying, looking at everything but the guardsman.  
“Just… just treat me with at least some respect! Alright?” She was uncaring of the condition he was setting, but the thought of needing the help of a human was borderline demeaning to her.  
“I know we’re both stuck here… but I’m not your fething servitor!” Simply wanting to get this, for her, uncomfortable conversation done and over with, she quickly and with that same impatience as earlier answered.  
“Yes! Yes!”   
“Alright then, let me just get the heater” Tymon answered, realising that he at least seemed to have gained some ground with his co-survivor as he made his way over to the stockpile again to get the heater that was still beside his vox-box.

The eldar, still trying to process how the tables had just turned on her, simply stood there as Tymon made his way around the stockpile to where he had set up his vox-box. Moments later he came back around, holding both the heater and the power cell that kept it functional with his lasgun slung over his shoulder, however the eldar did not follow him, barely paying any attention to the human as her mind continued to rationalise.  
_ I’m just manipulating him to help me, this still increases my chance for survival.  
_ Satisfied, she eventually decided to follow Tymon into the tent where she saw him taking off his flak vest and helmet. The guardsman, standing beside his makeshift bed, saw her, but paid no attention as he focused his efforts on taking his equipment off:  
“You can use one of the stretchers if you need to,” he said, gesturing at a corner on his side where there was a stacked pile of them.  
“Stretcher?” she asked, not knowing what he meant, though Tymon simply absentmindedly kicked his ‘bed’ in response:  
“One of these” again, what Tymon was saying had her stymied as she simply stood there, staring down at the stretcher. The guardsman was quick to notice the fact that she had yet to act on what he had recommended.  
“What, you’re sleeping on nothing?” again, that same confused expression, though this time she could manifest a response.  
“You sleep on that?” She asked, almost dreading the discomfort that this would inevitably result in. Previously, she simply slept on the grass, using her arm as a pillow while wearing her armour to keep her warm, though this would not be possible anymore due to her power situation.  
“Any better ideas?” Tymon retorted as he stepped past her and over to the heater which he had left on her side of the tent. Reluctantly and without words, the eldar stepped her way over to the pile of stretchers and haphazardly picked one up, accidentally causing the remainder of the pile to slide to the floor. This caught Tymon’s attention as he kneeled in front of the now active heater, swivelling around to see what happened, only to see the mess the eldar had created.  
“Good one knife ear” was all he said as he got up and made his way over to his stretcher bed while the heater got to work. ‘Knife ear’ decided not to dignify that with an answer as the still armor clad eldar put her stretcher down closer to the heater than Tymon and laid down upon it, putting her head right next to it. Tymon did the same on his stretcher and before long, they were both ready to sleep as the blue hue had turned many shades darker while the temperature, like yesterday, plummeted too. But the heater did a well enough job of keeping the pair warm as they lay beneath the tent’s roof with Tymon already halfway asleep.  
_ I’m just manipulating him to help me. _   
The thought continued to linger in her mind as she, lying there, simply waited for her sleep to come, yet she could not help but cup her ear again with that same self conscious feeling as those two same words echoed in her mind.


	5. Gak-Hole

What could only be described as snarling that was slowly growing louder quickly brought the peacefully sleeping eldar to full attention. In less than a second, she was upright, darting her eyes left and right, trying to identify her potential aggressor, then quickly reaching for her shuriken pistol as she went from sitting to crouching in a split second, one foot ahead with her knee close behind, but there was nothing. The snarling continued rhythmically, she started to listen out for the footsteps of whatever creature was apparently encroaching on prospector 3, then slowly advancing past the sleeping guardsman, only to realise the snarling was coming from him. Confusedly, the still armor clad eldar looked at the human, who’s head and back were awkwardly contorted in a position that can only be described as the result of moving in one's sleep. His mouth was open and from it, came that snarling sound. Confusion turned to aggravation as she realised the guardsman had just woken her up at what appeared to be quite early in this planet's morning, she remounted her pistol against her hip and sighed with desperation as she thought about what to do with this. At this point, the eldar knew with absolute certainty that if he continued to make this noise, she would not be able to sleep any further, but then again, the slowly brightening sky would also make further sleep difficult and with that, she decided it was time to start the day.

“Tymon!” she said with a hushed whisper, then immediately asking herself why she was whispering at all when her intention was to wake him up.  
“TYMON!” she now yelled causing him to stir a bit, though he was still asleep and ‘snarling’.   
“Tymon! Open your eyes!” she commanded with her now signature impatience, though again, the guardsman did not respond. Seeing the futility in her yelling, she tried to shake him awake by his arm:  
“Tymon!!!” This slowly brought him to consciousness as he started to straighten himself out on the makeshift bed, stretching his arms upwards and out of her grasp before instinctively putting one arm between his eyes and the sun which was just starting to reveal itself for the day.  
“Mmmm?” Was all the half asleep Tymon responded with as he finally stopped snoring.  
“Open your eyes!” she commanded again.  
“What?” Tymon mumbled in return as his eyelids slowly started to work again, revealing a pair of slightly bloodshot eyes. The eldar tried to stammer up a response explaining how he was snoring, though she failed to put into words the noise Tymon was making in his sleep.  
“You woke me up” she ended up saying, rather matter of factly.  
“Whatd’you’mean” he mumbled once more, the sentence sounding more like a single convoluted word than anything else as he propped himself up against his elbows.  
“You were…” again, unsure of what to say, she had to pause as she formulated her answer.  
“You were making noise while you rest” Tymon, now somewhat more conscious than moments prior, responded:  
“What like, sleep talking?” the eldar, not knowing what Tymon was talking about, recoiled her head slightly with a raised brow and a look of mild confusion at the term ‘sleep talking’, but she gave him a quick yet stunted response:  
“It was like... a... animal” Now Tymon was the one looking confused through his barely awake eyes.  
“What the frack are you on about?” he answered, grimacing and squinting as the sun met his eyes once again. At this point, the eldar was at her wits end, still partially waking up. She considered trying to imitate the disgusting sound the human was making, but opted against it.  
“Forget it, I don’t know the word”   
“Okay…” he answered through a heavy yawn as he laid his head back down, “I’m gonna try sleep again” As soon as his head was against the stretcher, the eldar glared at him, not that he took notice, and that impatient and demanding voice returned with a vengeance:  
“Do not rest now Tymon!”  
Still lying down against the stretcher, Tymon scoffed.  
“Look… Knife-ear... I don’t know what the time is on this gakhole but… I swear it's like six in the morning” He yawned once more, muttering through his halfway closed mouth. “So I’m gonna try sleep a couple more hours” There it was again;  _ Knife Ear _ .

At this point the eldar had had enough, unholstering her shuriken pistol and pointing it straight at his face, nudging him with the wide barrel. This opened his eyes, but the half awake look on his face turned to one of confusion as his still partially sleeping mind processed the fact that the weapon was once again trained on his face.  
“Get up Tymon” was all she commanded with a very cold voice as the choiceless and heavily squinting guardsman propped himself up against his arms once more while the eldar continued to keep the weapon pointed at him.  
“Seriously if I don’t get enough sleep I’ll be of no help to you” was the first clear sentence he spoke for today, though the attempt at explaining the uselessness of a sleep deprived human was instead seen as an act of defiance.  
“I am not killing you to help me! So you WILL help me!” with that, she shoved the weapon further into his face, however Tymon was more concerned with what the eldar was trying to say this time as he stammered up his answer.  
“W-What?? No I mean~”   
“YOU WILL HELP!” she would not even let him finish his perplexed sentence. Tymon, seeing how hopeless it would be to argue with the stubborn xeno, simply decided to obey her initial command as he sat upright, letting his arms fall to either side of him as his legs relaxed with an aggravated:  
“Fine…”   
Lowering her weapon, she waited for the guardsman to get up and ready to go, her eyes fixed on him, though he simply sat there, the tiredness on his face seemingly replaced with irritation.  
“Will you get up?” she asked, that same impatience as earlier present both in her voice and upon her face. Though the guardsman did not, he just opened his survival kit that was still mounted to his hip, even throughout the night, and pulled out that same nutrient brick that he was snacking on yesterday, taking some bites.  
“Hm?!?” again, the impatience was apparent.  
“I’d rather not starve while carrying around your crap” He said, angered and completely ignorant of the fact that his mouth was partially full when he said this, revealing the heavily chewed piece of nutrient brick in his mouth. While she still listened, she could not help but recoil in disgust at the sight that was the half chewed piece of food which was only more visible when he spoke.  
“What if I collapse and accidentally damage something” he retorted with a sarcastic smile once he swallowed his food. At this moment in time, the eldar wanted so badly to point the weapon to his face again and pull the trigger, though she realised he was making a valid point, he would be no help to her if he was with an empty stomach.

Before long, Tymon was on his feet and strapping his flak vest in around his chest, preparing for the long hike over to the eldars encampment while ‘knife ear’ simply sat near the opposite corner of the tent, waiting for him. Though before the guardsman bothered to go outside, he made his way over to the heater in the middle of the tent, realising it was still on and quickly turning it off before picking it up and checking the battery readout on the back. Only one light was on this time, its colour red and beneath the number 1.  
“Gak” Tymon muttered under his breath, this caught ‘knife-ear’s attention.  
“What is gak?” she asked, looking up at the guardsman holding the heater. It took him a moment to answer as their first major problem began to dawn on him.  
“Nothing” He answered, though his co-survivor stood up, insisting with her previous question.  
“Tell me what is gak!” Tymon, annoyed and tired, rolled his eyes and sighed.  
“The heater’s got one night of power left…” It took ‘knife-ear’ a couple of seconds to properly understand what the mon’keigh meant, even longer to formulate her response. Like their conversation yesterday, she knew what she wanted to say, yet she simply had no way of saying it, until she eventually managed to put a response into low gothic.  
“We can make more power?” Tymon looked up at her with a quick ‘hmm?’ As she finished speaking, but quickly looked away again as he thought about the ‘plasma microgen’ crate that he had left untouched, letting the heater fall gently out of his hands and onto the floor again.  
“I mean…” he trailed off, his voice growing almost cautious.  
“We do have a generator… but I’ve never set one up before... and it's not assembled” There was a flicker of hope on her face, but it quickly dissipated as he finished. Tymon however was deep in thought, running through potential solutions to this issue;   
He could try to bring the microgenerator online, though despite the fact that they usually came with a manual, he had never actually set one up before and had seen the damage an improperly activated microgenerator could do. However it was entirely possible that the ‘plasma microgen’ crate had a couple of possibly charged power cells. Another option that came to mind was to try and get to one of the other prospector sites, see if there were any charged and usable power cells lying around there, though his train of thought was interrupted by his co-survivor. Seeing no way how she could possibly contribute to a solution to their power issue, the eldar decided to, in her eyes at least, not waste any more time;  
“We… still need to come to my camp” she said, pointing at the exit of the tent which snapped Tymon’s focus back on her.  
“Alright, but I’m taking my weapon” the guardsman stubbornly stated as he reached for his weapon.  
“You will not!” answered the eldar with an aggravation similar to what Tymons face was betraying, but the guardsman retaliated with a fierce yet sleepy defiance:  
“Oh for frak’s sake… Yes I am” he answered through half closed eyes as the eldar’s hand was hovering over her own weapons’ handle.   
“No you not!” she responded, a stern unwavering expression on her face, only for it to be quickly wavered by Tymons response as he sighed:  
“Wouldn’t it make sense if we could both defend ourselves?” The logic that suddenly replaced his previous defiance took her by surprise as she quickly rethought her standpoint. Sure she managed to successfully subdue him when they first encountered each other, but not without great risk considering that he still managed to get a shot off on her head. She then recalled the day before where he startled her, armed and with every opportunity to shoot her at that point in time, yet he did not.  
“Like… what if one of those necron things attacked” this brought the eldar away from her thoughts as she scoffed at the concept of even trying to fight off any serious amount of canoptek on their own.  
“We then not live” she said without any emotion.  
“Uhhh…… What about the wildlife then?” He said through a stifled yawn, ‘knife-ear’ would not initially dignify him with a response.  
“What if some weird.... Fething…. Animals attack us or something?” again, the guardsman made sense which once again left her surprised. Eventually the eldar acquiesced but set a condition of her own:  
“Alright... but you are go first” growing irritated at her paranoia and distrust of himself, he agreed with a perplexed: “sure…” and with that, she simply stepped her way outside and waited near the tent’s entrance until Tymon exited, lasgun slung over his shoulder.

It was not long before the pair were hiking through the viscous ground once more; Tymon with his worn but sturdy boots wading through the mud and ‘knife ear’ without the inadvertent assistance of her stealth systems, both in complete silence. Unlike their last trip however, Tymon seemed not to require a break as his legs mindlessly stepped on and on, in fact this time it was the eldar he was accompanying who needed a rest, however she refused to show it. Step by step, her legs started to burn and buckle, the mud proving to be difficult to wade through for extended periods of time without her stealth systems helping her along. Her steps slowed while Tymon slowly grew further away from her. However, now that his mind was fully awake if somewhat absent, his legs were again starting to feel the strain of the lengthy hike through the less than friendly mud, but just like ‘knife ear’, he was refusing to show any weakness. Eventually and inevitably, the eldar’s legs buckled and she fell to her knees in the mud which engulfed half of her thighs and anything beneath. Tymon heard the resulting thick squelch sound, reminiscent of Rico's ‘face first’ encounter with the stuff and turned around quickly, only to notice the eldar on her knees in the mud looking exasperated.   
“The frack happened to you?” Having never had seen the eldar even remotely physically taxed, he was mildly surprised that she was down like this, even slightly tempted to take advantage of her weakened condition and attack, though he immediately had second thoughts considering she had easily bested him in combat when they first met and his legs was in a similar state.  
“I need rest…” she answered, almost embarrassedly through her somewhat pain stricken face. Tymon, while not panting, was sweating profusely as he took his helmet off and trudged his way over to a nearby tree to sit against.  
“You me both…” he mumbled as he sat down. 

The first thing he did was remove his helmet and wipe the millimeter thick layer of sweat off his forehead, causing some droplets to scatter to his left. With a similarly slow pace, the eldar got up and slogged her way over to that same tree, sitting beside him against the large trunk, though it was not long before she noticed a somewhat repulsive smell coming from the guardsman. She turned to face him, trying to ascertain whether or not it was him who was causing the odour, but quickly turned away again, recoiling at the smell that she now established was coming from him. She was no expert in the personal hygiene of any ‘mon’keigh’, but a scent like that as far as she knew, usually meant that there was a complete lack thereof. Choosing not to comment on it, she simply nudged away from him, further around the tree trunk and thankfully, Tymon did not seem to react or care, simply resting his head against an indent within the tree that seemed to be conveniently placed behind his head. After dozens of minutes of silence wherein Tymon simply stared at nothing while ‘knife ear’ coped with his odour, the guardsman eventually broke the silence:  
“Right, lets go” he stated with a stalwart determination behind his voice as he got himself back on his feet. The eldar was not far behind as her still somewhat strained legs finally allowed her to stand.  
“Lead the way” Tymon ended up saying to her surprise.  
While ‘knife ear’ thought she was finally getting him to listen and accept her as the proverbial leader, Tymon, in actuality, did not have the general layout of the forest memorised. In fact he knew full well that if he had to, he could simply navigate his way back to prospector three with his dataslate sans the superiority complex ridden xeno, but he also knew that he would likely never hear the end of it from his eldar co survivor if he simply decided to march his way back. With a small sense of confidence and accomplishment, the eldar lead the two the rest of the way to her encampment.

A comparatively small amount of walking later and the two survivors were at the eldars encampment once again with Tymon, as previously, immediately taking advantage of the firm ground, falling into a sitting position and brandishing his water bottle which was still fastened to his survival kit. ‘Knife ear’ however was almost completely ignorant of the guardsman as she went straight over to the overgrown tunnel again and vanished inside momentarily, only to come out holding two portable but heavy looking cylindrical crates bearing the same colour scheme as her armour. The first thing she saw was Tymon with the bottle in his mouth, gulping away at what seemed like a monumental amount of the remaining contents, though quickly stopping as he brought it away from his mouth, panting for a second before putting the lid back on. Still high on that bout of confidence from less than an hour prior, she simply deposited one of the cylindrical crates in front of him, expecting the guardsman to understand her unspoken command, though apart from a quick glance at the crate, he paid no attention, again looking straight ahead.  
“Tymon!” she barked, the annoyance at the guardsmans’ stubbornness and apparent absence returning.  
“Hm?” was the unflinching response she received from Tymon as he looked up at her.  
“Take it!” she commanded again, but this only earnt her a quiet groan and an irritated eye roll as the guardsman opened his bottle once more and took another swig as water sloshed around the rapidly emptying bottle.  
“Now Ty~!” the eldar was interrupted.  
“Just!... give me a break…” despite his tiredness, Tymon was again on the verge of breaking into another shouting fit, staring at nothing while his free hand was between the two until he allowed it to fall limp to the ground.  
“I’m not in the mood right now…” he continued. The eldar managed to get a glimpse of his face and even to her, he looked like he had been through the warp and back with bags under his gently bloodshot eyes. In that moment, she felt his tiredness and put her crate to the ground, sitting down beside him but once again recoiling at his body odour, however this time he noticed and glanced at her for a moment before looking directly at the grimacing xeno.  
“What?” he asked, sounding both confused and insulted. The eldar could not even look at the mon’keigh as she simply said the words;   
“You reek” through her cringing facial expression. His confusion was quickly replaced with an annoyed embarrassment as he raised his eyebrows.  
“Believe me I know…”   
“Do something against it then?” she asked, confused as to why he did nothing about it if he knew of this issue. Dumbstruck at her response, he simply glared at her for a moment:  
“sure... I’ll just step into a shower... ‘Cause there’s definitely one of those on this fracking warp-hole...”   
While his response was one of sarcasm, there was validity behind it. During his short stay on the planet, he had not come across a single body of water anywhere, nor did he see signs of any.  
“There is... pool of water nearby!” she quickly shot back, though Tymon, while tired, seemed prepared for her response.  
“Yeah~ but with emperor knows what floating about inside” The eldar simply scoffed.  
“I’d rather not have some xeno parasite or~.. whatever swimming up my gak-hole” He continued, recalling one of his survival training lectures about impure water sources, though the eldar completely sidestepped his counter-argument at the word ‘gak-hole’.  
“W~What is gak-hole!?!” she confusedly stammered up. Tymons first response was simply a scoff with a half smile as he looked down, but the eldar insisted.  
“Tell me what is gak-hole!!”  
“My rear end!” Tymon sternly shot back but through a tiny bout of immature laughter, bringing a maddened expression to ‘Knife ear’s face before it once again grimaced at his response. 

‘Knife ear’ was not having this as an excuse. Eldar, due to their physiology, rarely if ever would have to deal with body odour of any kind, so the very prospect of living with a mon’keigh that was starting to smell as bad as the forest’s mud seemed unbearable to her. With that, after a moment of finding the correct words and formulating her response, she answered.  
“I bathed in it and I am health!” confident he at least had an idea as to what she was talking about, though it took him a moment before he blatantly shot back.  
“Well don’t wail at me if you suddenly start gakking red”  
Once again, the guardsman had pushed her to her limit, this time with his stubbornness and she immediately broke into a screaming fit.  
“JUST BATHE!!!” she yelled, bringing Tymon to full attention as he turned to face her.  
“YOU REEK LIKE GAK-HOLE!!!” the eldar continued, bringing her newly learnt piece of vocabulary to bear. The guardsman quickly got to his feet, raising his voice in return, prompting ‘knife-ear’ to get up too.  
“Oh do I?!?!?!”  
“YES!” Her hair gently shaking for a moment as she screamed her response.  
“Well I can fracking guarantee you that it’ll be even worse if I start PUKING MY GUTS UP!” He shot back.  
“Tymon I~... GAAAHHHHHH!!!!” With that exclamation, she suddenly started to speak in a language entirely unfamiliar to him, presumably native eldar.  
“Oh and now you’re speaking luna runes! Frack you!” After his snide half tired response, she unholstered her shuriken pistol and quickly pointed it to his face, catching Tymon off guard, though that did not stop him from reacting as he quickly shouldered his lasgun at her, putting the pair into a silence ridden stalemate.

“Is this where we just shoot each other?” he eventually asked after dozens of seconds.  
“You would die first” she answered with that same cold voice as previously, though Tymon remained unphased.  
“And you would be injured on a necron planet” This once again brought back the silent component of their stalemate for dozens more seconds until ‘knife-ear’ this time broke the silence, seeing the futility in this stalemate;  
“We should point weapons down…” she said, giving in to the situation, slowly regretting allowing him to be armed in the first place.  
“Right…” Tymon slowly answered, lowering his weapon at the same time as ‘knife-ear’ and slinging the gun back over his shoulder while the eldar remounted hers on her hip and then there they stood, still facing each other, sans their weapons this time yet simply not knowing what to do until ‘knife-ear’ broke the silence once again:  
“You need to bathe…” This quickly elicited another scoff from Tymon’s lips as he looked away in partial embarrassment.  
“You need to!” she persisted, subconsciously admitting to herself that it would only make her life easier on a trivial level. The embarrassed Tymon, still very weary of the possibility of indigenous parasites finding their home inside his stomach, was about to recite his point again, but stopped himself realising that they would just reach the same point they were at minutes prior. So, also seeing the futility in the situation, he answered:  
“You’re not gonna shut your trap unless I do, are you?” his again irritated gaze now fixed on her, though it took her a moment to answer as her lack of low gothic vocabulary failed her once again;  
“Yeess??” she answered, almost inquisitive sounding as Tymon half scoffed half laughed at her response.  
_ She doesn’t even know what I mean.  
_ Seeing that this argument will go nowhere but in circles unless he bathed in potentially parasite infested waters, he finally acquiesced:  
“Okay, off we go” he said defeated, flinging his arms up beside him and letting them fall limp again, the thought of parasites congregating in his bowels sickening him.  
“Okay, walk there” she answered, sounding almost relieved as she gestured to their right. Past the cave she had set up camp in, was an area that seemed almost overgrown but with a swath right through the middle where plants were either cut or pushed aside. Wordlessly, the guardsman made his way towards the parting of plants as the eldar simply stood by his side and waited for him to pass her and, when he did, she followed him a metre behind. 

Again, the thought that Tymon was finally accepting her as the ‘leader’ came back. He seemed to have acquiesced to her demands for him to bathe, even though it took an armed stalemate and incredible persistence, though at the same time, she had trouble even fathoming having the issues he was concerned of. While he seemed burly, well built and fit, if he was truly vulnerable to natural microscopic beings that lived within the very substance his species relied on, he was in actuality incredibly fragile. That thought immediately brought into question his usefulness, sure he was physically strong and, were he not as predictable as the rest of his kind, he would likely win against her in a balanced hand to hand combat situation, but if  _ parasites _ or other such microscopic beings put him at risk, what use truly was he. However, like clockwork, as soon as his usefulness was brought into question, that same part of her mind that kept yearning for company rapidly shut it down, this time under the pretense that she had already ‘wasted resources’ on him and that she may as well get what she can out of their coexistence. Though that did not stop her from again thinking she was getting through to him as the pair waded through the much taller grass, some of which, like the grass in the obelisks’ clearing, was swaying to avoid them. 

Ten minutes of the rarity that was walking on firm ground on this planet put the two into a clearing inhabited only by a small lake encircled by various flora; ranging from the coloured plants that receded into their little pods upon approach, to huge strands of the aversive grass. But the plants were not the only living things that rested here, for between the plants that made the floral ring around the lake were dozens of tiny but gently glowing winged insects, skydancing in erratic yet graceful patterns all over the enshrouding flora. Though that floral ring was incomplete; near the mouth of the entrance to this natural enclosure, was an area wherein the plants were none and where one would have immediate access to the lake.  
“This it?” Tymon awkwardly asked the eldar who had emerged behind him less than a moment later.  
“It is here” his co-survivor answered, having a rough but sufficient understanding of what the guardsman said. Tymon half expected the lake to smell of the half functional plumbing system of the cruiser ‘Telion’, aboard which he was assigned but to his surprise, the entire enclosure was odourless if perhaps slightly humid. After some moments of thought on how he would go about bathing in these foreign waters, he decided to pursue the first two things on his mind; privacy and the outright refusal to _bathe_ in front of a xeno.  
“Alright, off you go” he said, assuming she would get the indirectly spoken message.  
“What?” The xeno confusedly sputtered out, earning her a more enunciated: “Off you go” but all she gave in return was a defiant and insisting response of:  
“No I am waiting here”  
“I’m not gonna skinny-dip with you standing there” he said, his own defiance matching her own.  
“What is skinny-dip?” she rapidly shot back, her hands wide with confusion.  
“Oh for~” Tymon groaned, his head in his hand as the seemingly widening language barrier grew ever more apparent.  
“Look, just go back to your... camp thing, and I’ll come over when I’m done, alright?” the guardsman practically commanded.  
“No! I am waiting here!” her insistence remained, bringing out an annoyed confusion in the guardsman.  
“But… Why!?!?” he almost pleaded.  
“Because I don’t…!” in her mind, her response was ready, though again, her limited vocabulary failed her.  
“I don’t know the words!” she said, sounding completely defeated as she was about to turn around and leave him to his devices, but the ‘mon’keigh’ answered.  
“Of course you don’t…” he said with exasperation “Honestly, at this point, it just seems like you want to see me without my armour!” That sentence, however satirical it may be, shocked her to the core as she realised what he meant and she refocused her attention on him.   
“I DO NOT WANT TO SEE THAT!!!!” the now deeply insulted eldar screamed as the pair erupted into another tirade.  
“Well thank the emperor for clearing that up!” Tymon shot back, but all the eldar suddenly did was start speaking in her own tongue again with a desperate exasperation, eliciting another angered response from the guardsman.  
“Oh for fracks sake…” he answered as he put his head in his hands, but this alien speech of hers was short lived as she answered once again.  
“I do not believe you with weapon!” Once again, the guardsman was at a loss as to what she was trying to say.  
“What the warp does that mean…” he answered, his face stricken with an ever more desperate exasperation until she eventually and with a stunted syntax, explained her point.  
“You will shoot me when I… come to my camp” for a split second she might have seemed proud of her explanation.  
“Wait as in…” the exasperation drained from his face as he finally realised what she was trying to say.  
“You mean you don’t trust me?” his response brought forth nothing but a dumbfounded expression upon her face which rapidly replaced her momentary proudness.  
“What~what is trust?” This response almost brought Tymon to angered tears as once again, that language barrier grew wider, but he pressed on as laconically as humanly possible.  
“You think… that I am going to shoot you in the back when you’re gone…”  
“Yes! Yes!” her face lit up ever so slightly with enthusiasm again as they came another baby step closer to understanding each other properly.  
“Yeah, that means you don’t trust me!” However Tymon in no way reciprocated her enthusiasm as she answered,  
“Yes! I don’t trust you!”  
“Okay...” he paused for a moment. “You do realise… I will be naked and unarmed… in the water…”  
“Yes?” the eldar answered  
“Right… So tell me…” he paused again, now in complete disbelief at the fact that he was explaining this to her.  
“What is a _naked and bathing_ guardsman going to do to a paranoid and armed… eldar!?!?” he half screamed, momentarily forgetting what to call her by. The eldar was moments before firing back, but quickly realised that the human was again making sense, that was assuming he decided to bathe in the first place.  
“So are you still gonna just stand there?” This was met with a stone cold, but somewhat embarrassed silence on the eldar’s part as she did just stand there for many moments, but she eventually responded in the form of embarrassedly walking back through the path between the plants that brought them to the lake in the first place.  
“Thank you!” he screamed behind her before exclaiming the words: “Frack me!” to himself once she was further down the path.

As soon as she was out of view, Tymon with a sigh, slung his weapon from his shoulder and laid it down beside him, then taking his helmet off and unclipping his flak vest, letting both pieces of equipment fall to the ground, her distrust simply leaving his mind wandering. Just one day prior, he had an opportunity to ambush her, one which he had opted against taking, even being the first to lower his weapon, yet she still refused to trust him. He quickly stopped wondering however when he reminded himself that she was still eldar, a sworn enemy of the imperium. Sure he had heard rumours that both species, on occasion had worked side by side under the guise of so called ‘alliance’ but, as far as he was concerned; it was public knowledge amongst the astra militarum that the eldar despised humanity as a species. With that, his mind wrapped up this train of thought with the conclusion that she did not trust him simply because he was human and she was eldar. He had practically been taught never to trust an eldar during basic training, frequently being told that their species was by nature manipulative and that they saw humanity as beneath them, it was entirely possible that she had a similar mentality. Yet ironically, she needed his help to prevent her from freezing to death the night before and he had not yet needed anything from her. With that thought, a small part of him began to question these teachings as he continued to remove his equipment and clothing in preparation to wade into the waters and clean himself off.


	6. Howl

On her slow way back to her camp, the eldar’s mind ran through the verbal altercation that the pair had exchanged at the lake over and over, each time involuntarily focusing on the guardsman’s uncomfortable comment about her wanting to see him ‘without his armour’. At the time, she only felt insulted at his words, but steadily she began to realise that that entire situation only came to be because of her distrust for Tymon which brought her to question the attitude she has decided to take towards him. She also questioned how she would have watched him if he was bathing; grimacing at the very thought of seeing a naked human, especially one as unkempt and potentially disgusting as Tymon. With that uncomely image, she began to realise how poorly thought through her so-called plan back at the lake was; if she had waited there with her back turned, he would have been in an optimal position to simply attack yet now that there is some distance between the two, she would easily be able to tell if he was trying to sneak up on her. In fact, even if she did not hear him, there was only one way to the lake and back, she would know where he’s coming from if he tried anything like that. Once she had established this, the eldar rapidly grew annoyed at herself; her distrust of the mon’keigh had almost proverbially shot her in the back because it came very close to denying her a possibly vital line of defence against Tymon if he chose to attack. Quickly however, as she emerged back at the start of the lakes’ path, she pushed this thought aside as she still had that line of defence, but this did not stop the almost petulant feeling of stupidity the whole ordeal left her with.

After some moments of standing at the mouth of the path, hearing the occasional quiet splash coming from the lake alongside the various noises of the planet's wildlife, she made her way over to the crates she had initially put down in front of Tymon as her stomach began to demand sustenance. It was actually quite uncommon for an eldar to grow hungry, not just because of the lack of poverty within current eldar society, but because an eldar can survive on a single full meal for 5 days if necessary. That did not stop the fact that she was now craving a warm, substantial meal, something with a gentle spice to it that pricked only the edges of her tongue, something that would leave her belly full and her tastebuds satisfied. However all she had to answer that craving were small, hard, tasteless ration pellets which may possibly be tepid at best. Sure they did their job well in providing her with all the necessary nutrients she required to stay alive, but they did nothing to quench her hunger for an actual meal. Doing her best to ignore this craving, she opened the crate she was now standing in front of and picked out the topmost pellet dispenser that, contrary the dozens of others, was seemingly tossed in atop the more organised pile of dispensers. Holding it to her free hand, she released two of the pellets from the small handheld device and quickly put them to her mouth, arching her head back and swallowing them like pills. Following this, with a lack of anything significant to do but wait for the guardsman, she allowed herself to sit down and simply stare at nothing for the time being, though like previously, this brought forth further contemplations of the situation she now found herself in.

As her mind brought the previous argument forth once again, some of the low-gothic words and phrases the guardsman would use came to mind; ‘gak-hole’, ‘for frak’s sake’, but thanks to the guardsman, she understood well enough what gak-hole meant. Nevertheless, this train of thought took her mind down the route of the previous situations where Tymon had to awkwardly translate or figure out what she was trying to say. While she saw no serious issues with that particular status quo so far, she did see how this could theoretically make problematic situations worse than they needed to be if they were unable to communicate effectively, the earlier argument being a trivial yet profound exhibit of the result of their language barrier induced miscommunication. Eventually, her thoughts on their communication issues and the words he would use once again brought forth his unkind nickname for her.  
_ Knife ear _

Hearing those words even in her mind, called back that same wave of self consciousness she would feel if it was Tymon calling her by that name. The eldar was moments away from simply sideswiping this thought as she had done previously, but she realised that for the time being she was alone and she would be remiss if she did not take advantage of this moment to confront the feeling properly. While the eldar was rather nonchalantly sitting cross legged with her arm upon her leg and her head slouched upon her hand as she stared into the ground, the self consciousness made her feel small and immature, almost to the point where such trivial concerns as the shape or size of ones ears seemed to actually matter in an almost angsty way. It was not long before the protective feeling she initially felt against the term ‘knife-ear’ came back and with a vengeance, quickly bringing the hand she was resting her head against to gently cup her left ear for many moments until her neck started to ache. However it was not long before she acknowledged this uncomfortable feeling as little more than a resurgence of an adolescent self consciousness she felt during her formative decades, yet she remained confused at the fact that a mon’keigh was able to cause such a resurgence. Nevertheless, she took a deep breath and laid that feeling to rest for what would hopefully be the last time while she mounted the pellet dispenser that was still in her hand against her armour’s hip belt.

After dozens of minutes enveloped wholly in the foreign waters that made up the lake Tymon was bathing in, the guardsman started to wade his way out of the natural pool of water. To his surprise, the bottom of the lake was warmer than the top, giving it an almost homely and comforting feeling he was slowly growing reluctant to leave behind, but his fortitude held out as the completely bare Tymon waded and eventually stepped his way towards the mouth of the lake. Immediately the parts of him that were no longer submerged were greeted with the planet's gentle breeze, a breeze that brought forth shivers as the wet Tymon was quick to try and redress himself, going straight for his bundled up uniform to find his undergarments, but he stopped dead.  
“Oh frak…” he muttered to himself, realising the fact that he had no immediate method of drying himself off. Tymon then felt another wave of shivers as the breeze once again struck his wet skin and, with absolutely no idea on how to solve this predicament, ended up shaking his hands in an effort to discard some of the water from his body. This was of course to no avail as Tymon then quickly resorted to brushing the water off with his bare hands, but again the seemingly freezing breeze made it clear that this was having practically no effect.  
“Frak!!!” he exclaimed again, though it was not like he would have been able to remember to bring a towel with him anyway. Though he did see one solution to this predicament, it involved his undershirt and without it, the uniforms were far less than comfortable. For many moments, he evaluated his options; get dressed without drying, or dry off with a ‘not strictly necessary’ item of clothing he had. While the second solution was far from desirable, the first was even less so because it would simply recreate the problem he was forced to solve by bathing, in fact it could even be considered dangerous if the planet's weather decided to worsen. With reluctance and choicelessness both in conflict with one another, the guardsman reached down to the pile his uniform was forming near the mouth of the lake and fished out his undershirt, the words ‘57th Farsighters’ emblazoned upon the khaki item of clothing. With the reluctance to carry out what he had established as the only viable solution growing, he stretched the shirt outwards slightly and began to haphazardly dry himself off, the soon to be drier parts of his skin relishing the sudden lack of a freezing cold breeze. After several minutes of drying himself off, redressing himself and bundling the now wet undershirt into his survival kit, the guardsman was on his way back through the swath cut through the aversive grass. He felt cleaner, but also embarrassed and demeaned at the very fact that he had just obeyed a xeno who had told him to bathe. That was not the only thing that brought him discomfort however; without his undershirt, the seams of his overalls had free reign to scrape against his bare chest and back beneath, causing the guardsman to frequently have to adjust the uniform and scratch around his collarbones to relieve the various resulting itches. However, he braved these irritations with a stalwart determination as he continued on his way. 

Not long later, Tymon reached the start of the path again where he was greeted by ‘Knife-ear’ almost intently staring him and the path down for a moment, though she seemed to calm down once her eyes locked with Tymons’;  
“What’s up?” he asked, concern accompanying the slight recoil of his head as his eyes met with hers, but the eldar met his question with one of her own.  
“Did you bathe?” This ‘answer’ of hers removed any concern the guardsman may have had for her as he rolled his eyes.  
“Oh for fracks sake…” he muttered, before allowing his aggravation at the question to form on his face. “What else would I have been doing there?”  
The eldar was about to proverbially clap back with a response of her own, but lacking anything substantial to say in return, she simply scoffed at his answer before turning around and muttering something else in her native tongue. Hearing her speak whatever language it was that she spoke was about to elicit another response from Tymon about how he didn’t understand what she was saying, but instead he released an exasperated sigh;  
“Why’d this have to happen to me…” he muttered under his own breath, his voice reeking of desperation. Thankfully to Tymon the eldar did not hear his desperate response, however something else suddenly seemed to join their little conversation; namely a low pitched animalistic howl that quickly ascended before abruptly cutting off and allowing an echo to scream it back quieter each time.  
Both Tymon and his eldar co-survivor heard the sound simultaneously, quickly bringing both of their attentions away from each other as the eldar turned to face the direction the sound had come from.  
“That sounded pretty close...” the now alert guardsman quietly announced as he instinctively checked his surroundings, then whatever it was howled again but this time from a different direction. The eldar quickly turned about, now bringing her reflexes to bear as she suddenly held her shuriken pistol in her hand while Tymon was slower to react as he turned to face the same general direction as the sound.  
“It is from this location” the eldar said once the echo had subsided. With that, Tymon put the stock of his lasgun against his shoulder while pointing the barrel down.  
“Right…” Tymon mubled. The next few dozen seconds were spent in silence with both of the survivors bearing a paranoid and itchy trigger-finger, expecting to have to shoot at the first thing to emerge from the forest, but Tymon broke their defensive silence.  
“We should probably take your stuff to um~ you know” he awkwardly trailed off, but the eldar seemed to know what he was trying to say as she answered with a simple:  
“Yes…”  
Following this, she almost cautiously made her way over to the two cylindrical crates which were still there while Tymon followed suit, keeping a similarly watchful eye on his surroundings. With her own eyes fixed to the tree covered horizon, she grabbed one of the cylinders, checking it was secure and fitted it to the back of her armour, weighing her down ever so slightly while Tymon went to grab the still open cylinder with the ration pellet dispensers using his other hand, trying and seemingly successfully resealing it as he did but he immediately found trouble with finding a way to secure it.  
“How do I~ How do I carry it?” he asked, this time the eldar seemed almost telepathic with her response as she, without looking, pointed out a retracted strap on its side for him to use and with that, he extended said strap and quickly slung the somewhat heavy crate over his shoulder before he brought that hand back to his weapon, then once Tymon was ready, the two started their way back to prospector 3.

Not even ten minutes into their journey did they hear that same howl again, but this time it was closer, much closer and it brought the pair to stop in their tracks through the thick, shin high mud with the eldar rapidly ascertaining which direction it came from before that same howl now came from the opposite direction. Then they noticed some of the more distant trees’ hanging leaves moving as something disturbed their branches.  
“Okay… it's definitely moved…” Once again, Tymon began to inspect his surroundings when he pointed this out.  
“It is nearer…” In that moment, the eldars seemingly stalwart and calculative defense seemed to have been dented slightly as she, with apprehension stared down a direction that seemed to lead nowhere, Tymon noticed this and looked down that same direction, but he saw nothing. Then the sound of an almost distant squelch came from the right of their route. Tymon and the eldar both quickly turned to face that direction, something had moved the mud, he had caught a glimpse of the viscous ground shifting slightly, then nothing.  
“It's over there…” the guardsman said, keeping his weapon trained on the spot where the mud had now resettled. Then slightly to the left of that direction emanated that same sound. They turned to look again, weapons ready, a houndlike creature; short in height but almost lanky in length, its legs almost fully submerged with a pureblack head just above the viscous ground, beneath its snout were two jaws looking almost like one, but opening and bearing an array of gray teeth each. It was effortlessly wading towards them before stopping mere meters away. Moments later, they were greeted by an almost whispered growling sound, this time behind them, bringing the eldar to turn about and stare down their second opponent as fast as the mud allowed.  
“Another one?” Tymon hissed  
“Yes!” The eldar almost aggressively hissed back, then another wet squelching sound, slightly to the first creatures right, accompanied by the jostling of one the much closer trees as the creature seemed to jump out of one of the branches above it. The guardsman then trained his weapon on the other split jawed hound as one by one, more wet thudding sounds came from around them, either dropping from the tree’s above, or seemingly emerging from beneath the mud. Eventually, the pair was surrounded by at least a dozen of these creatures, all of which were low against the ground, some of which had started to growl as the first one was.  
“Pack behaviour” Tymon eventually whispered, slowly aiming his weapon from creature to creature, trying to see which one would make the first move or if he would have to.  
“What?” the eldar once again hissed with a scared impatience to her voice.  
“Pack behaviour” He repeated, slightly louder this time as one of the creatures growled louder in response.  
“I don’t know what that is...” she answered with the same demeanour as moments prior. For seconds, they simply stood there, weapons ready, staring down their aggressors while they in turn stared back, but they had now formed a staggered perimeter around them leaving less than no avenue of escape, then out of the blue, one of them howled the same howl they heard earlier, piercing both Tymon’s and the scorpion's ears. It left them both stunned for a moment as the eldar instinctively covered her more sensitive ears with a scream, weapon still in hand. Then one attacked, lunging itself at Tymon. He fired, holding the trigger down and haphazardly aiming at the split jawed hound but managing to riddle it with las-bolts, causing it to squirm mid air and splash into the ground before somehow inverting its joints to land upright with its head now upside down. The other hounds started growling and made their attacks as well, one of them lunging at the eldar, but despite being preoccupied with her ears, she readied her chainsword with lightning speed and in the same motion, struck the toothed blade into the face of the hound without even looking in its direction. It released a pained screech as it spun in the air, and unceremoniously splashed into the ground beside them, then more of them lunged at the pair as Tymon screamed for the eldar to “RUN!” only to suddenly catch the jaws of one of the hounds around his lasgun. With one quick motion he shook the creature off and accidentally into another while the eldar, still with pain in her face performed numerous precise strikes with her chainsword, seemingly killing another two. Despite what Tymon had screamed, the pair were virtually unable to run, stuck in place due to both the mud and their new aggressors while the hounds seemed completely unhindered by the viscous fluid around them, simply jumping at either Tymon or ‘Knife-ear’, or onto the trunks of the tree’s many had dropped from where they’d climb like squirrels for a split second before jumping at them once more, using the apparent double jointedness of their legs massively to their advantage. Amidst the resulting chaos, Tymon managed to get a multitude of rapid-fired shots off against another one of the hounds, this time killing it in mid air as he stepped out of the corpses way, but the mud around his boots caused him to lose balance as he did, then another jumped and bit at his shoulder, managing to sink some of its teeth in while causing the guardsman to scream out in pain, but it lost its grip as Tymon fell, taking the shoulder of his uniform with it. The cylinder on his back arched his chest outwards, but a hound jumped upon him and inadvertently pushed his head into the ground where he was almost drowned by the mud around him. Choking as he lost grip on his lasgun, the creature upon him tried to claw and bite at his face, but the enveloping mud obscured him causing the creature to barely clip his left cheek with its maw before suddenly squealing out loud as it was no longer upon him. Quickly he pulled his muddied head out of the viscous fluid and saw the eldar, still striking with impressive precision each time, yelling at Tymon to: “GET UP!!”.  
Sheer luck allowed Tymon to grab onto his lasgun which was still submerged but within arms reach, getting to his feet again just before another hound tried to lunge at him. Instinctively he jabbed his arm out and managed to strike the creature in its face, dazing it momentarily but long enough for him to bring his muddied lasgun to bear and fire at it. Then, almost without explanation, the hounds started to retreat. Leaving a panting and hacking Tymon alongside a red faced eldar with her now tremendously scratched up armour.

What remained of the hounds was either the multitude of corpses around them or nowhere to be seen with their only indication being the again disturbed hanging leaves for a moment as the hounds seemed to have retreated back into the branches above them, but Tymon and his co-combatant were far from unscathed themselves. As soon as the guardsmans adrenaline high wore off, the pain from his shoulder injury decided to make itself known causing Tymon to hiss through gritted teeth and then release a withheld exclamation of pain. He looked at the injury, but it was obscured by a mix of both mud and blood that was starting to run free out of his shoulder. ‘Knife-ear’ was quick to notice the guardsmans pain as she quickly swung around to face him, exclaiming his name with surprise but then grimacing as she saw the injury. For the moment, she was stunned, not knowing what to do, he was human, and she had no idea if any of her remedies would help him, but Tymon would stun her once more as he with again gritted teeth used his other hand to rapidly and almost violently brush off the mud so he could get a better look at the injury, but that did little more than bring an immediate and pained scream from his lips. His breathing sped up while she couldn’t even look at the injury for the moment.  
“Oh frak!” he groaned through now withheld tears, there were multiple cuts, some of them mere scrapes from the hounds’ insecure grip with its maw, but some of them deep as its teeth had sunken into his flesh and torn parts out when it did end up losing its grip, yet some of the mud still obscured his view.  
“Water! I need water!” he half panted half moaned, vaguely gesturing towards the injury. Now finally with something to do the eldar acted, any hint of the irritation and anger from earlier gone as his pain seemed to strike even at her heart. Quickly she grabbed the hydrator from her hip belt and tried to hand it to him, but he would not grab it.  
“No! No! On there!” he painfully yelled, bracing himself.  
“On the..” she cluelessly asked with an almost quiet voice, an apprehensive anxiety on her face.  
“YES JUST!...” He interrupted himself with another breathless pant, still gesturing at his shoulder. Grimacing, the eldar turned the open end of the hydrator to his bitten shoulder and squirted the water out of it and onto the wound, eliciting an even louder now blood-curdling exclamation from Tymon as the jet of water cleared the mud away and out of his wounds. The eldar continued while closing her eyes for a moment as she experienced a second hand pain from Tymon’s. She hated it, his screams not only hurting her ears, but hurting  _ her _ as he bore the agonizing process until she couldn’t continue any longer, she turned away from the wound in shock, a tear coming from the corner of her left eye as her breath became shaky. Meanwhile Tymon seemed to have the wound under control, awkwardly opening his survival kit with his free hand and pulling out what the empire considered to be gauze; a temporary but self hardening patch of ‘skin seal’ which he, without hesitation but huge anticipation slapped onto the wound and held in place, hyperventilating through once again gritted teeth. Then it started to shrink around the wound, hardening beneath his hand, bringing forth another barrage of screams and exclamations from the guardsman. The eldar turned to face him again but still couldn’t bear to look as the skin seal solidified around his shoulder while another tear came from her other eye.  
_ Why is this hurting me? _

Dozens of seconds later, the guardsman had finally stopped screaming, his lasgun no longer in his injured right arm and presumably somewhere in the mud once again, hesitantly the guardsman tapped the skin seal, wincing slightly, it was now flexibly fixed to his injured shoulder. Panting the guardsman tried to use his right arm to close the survival kit, but he could not do so without at least some difficulty. By this time, the eldar had finally gotten the guts to turn around and face him again albeit with an unleaving concern on her face. She wanted to ask if he was okay, yet the vocabulary just was not there, but Tymon did not need any vocabulary to understand that she was somehow concerned for him. Still dazed from the pain of ‘treating’ his wound, he answered with exhaustion:  
“I’ll be fine” he said, almost all in one word. The eldar had nothing to answer with besides a feeble:  
“Yes…” followed by a quiet “okay…”   
Wordlessly, the guardsman looked at his now covered shoulder, but then he noticed the cylinder he was carrying, it was open.  
“Oh gak..” he said out loud, he arched his head further around his right shoulder and noticed it was empty. The eldar’s concern remained, but this time she answered  
“What?”  
Swallowing nothing and still fighting his shoulders pain, the guardsman simply described his observation.  
“Your crate opened in the fight” he said very frankly. A different concern suddenly took hold of the eldars face as she waded over to him and sans any thought turned the guardsman around by the shoulder to see for herself. As the guardsman exclaimed slightly in pain again, that concern on her face turned to fear as she saw the empty crate slung over Tymons back. Quickly she holstered her chainsword, took the crate off of her back and opened it up, holding it in her other arm as she noticed that the one she was carrying did not contain her rations, then she froze, holding the crate. Confused, Tymon answered:  
“W-What?” She closed that crate and mounted it on her back again, not even looking Tymon in the eye as she answered:  
“That was my~” Listlessly and with hesitation, she closed her mouth and tapped her lips a couple of times, hoping this would get the message across. For a moment, he remained confused but he quickly realised what she meant:  
“Food?” The eldar apprehensively nodded her shocked head as Tymon mentioned the word, then he realised what this implied.  
“O-Oh..” was all he could stammer up. With that clearly unsatisfactory response from the mon’keigh, she turned around with an almost crazed look on her face, but Tymon was quick to respond again.  
“Y-You could have some of mine, I’ve got enough for~”  
“I CAN’T!~” the eldar interrupted, but then interrupted herself not knowing how to point out their different nutritional requirements.  
“I’m just trying to help!”  
“They are like Gak-Hole!!” She hesitantly resorted to saying, paying no mind to Tymon’s poor excuse for an offer to help, at least in her eyes.  
“Well.. What can I do?!?!” He answered, raising his voice to her level as he awkwardly tried to shrug, only managing to do so with one shoulder, but the eldar would not answer this as she turned around, resisting the urge to pull her own hair out. Seemingly oblivious to the clearly emotionally overloaded eldar, Tymon rapidly answered, anticipating that she would somehow blame him for this.  
“Knife ear I swear to Terra if you’re gonna fracking~”  
_ Enough. No more Knife Ear.  
_ The distressed eldar involuntarily interrupted him at the top of her voice, now somehow facing that same self-consciousness again as earlier alongside the fear of starving to death.  
“KAE-LITH’A!”  
_ This is not the time for shallow adolescent worries.  
_ The guardsman grumbled, rolling his eyes, but shot back with a similar volume:  
“I don’t know what THAT MEANS!” But then it set in to her what she had just exclaimed. Dazed and overwhelmed, she just stood there, taking shaky but deep breaths, slowly getting her emotions at least partially back under control while Tymon just glared at the back of her head with his unwarranted anger rapidly being replaced once again by confusion.  
“W-What is Kae-Lith’a…?” he eventually asked after further moments of silence and forced patience on his part. Amongst the storm of emotions within her, embarrassment and sheepishness now decided to surface too as she awkwardly turned around and faced the guardsman’s general direction. Then his eyes met her own while she seemed unable to even look at him as she tapped her chest and repeated her name.  
“Kae-Lith’a…”


End file.
